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THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME 




GENERAL SIR DOUGLAS HAIG AND LIEUT. -GENERAL 
SIR PERTAB SINGH. 



THE BATTLE 
OF THE SOMME 



FIRST PHASE 



By JOHN BUCHAN, B. A. 

Former Private Secretary to Lord Milner, High Commissioner of 

Africa during the South African War, Author of "The African 

Colony,'' "Sir Walter Raleigh," "The Marquis of 

Montrose," "Nelson s History of the War," 

and other works 



With INTRODUCTION by 

GEORGE H. CASAMAJOR 

Formerly Assistant Editor of "The Historians' History of the 

World," and Historical Editor of "The Photographic 

History of the Civil War" 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS NELSON & SONS 
LONDON EDINBURGH PARIS 

H'6 ■ 



3^545 



Copyright, 1916, by 
THOMAS NELSON & SONS 






JAN -2 1817 



INTRODUCTION 

FOR more than two years Mr. Buchan, in his 
* 'Nelson's History of the War," has been labor- 
ing industriously and painstakingly to tell the 
story of the greatest and most heroic tragedy the 
human race has ever enacted, as its successive scenes 
have been completed. His fitness for the difficult 
task of recording history while in the making has 
been shown in the considerable number of volumes 
already to his credit. In them we have evidence of 
his ability for judicious selection from the material 
at his disposal — material which possesses the qual- 
ities of freshness and spontaneity of expectation and 
of hope. 

It will be years before a definite military history 
of the gigantic struggle in Europe can be expected; 
but when it does appear, it will not contain the ele- 
ment of human interest such as we have in an ac- 
count like this, prepared while the heartfelt sense 
of the grimness and pathos has not yet been dulled 
by the great anodyne of time. 

It is in the details of a narrative such as is con- 
tained in this volume that Mr. Buchan is accomplish- 
ing his great and lasting work, and in the British 
Isles his reputation as an eyewitness and recorder 
of the Great War's events stands highest among 
those who have placed the story upon the printed 
page. 

"The Battle of the Somme" deals with the first 
phase of what up to now has been the supreme 
struggle between the Entente Allies and their Teu- 
tonic opponents. It begins with that historic morn- 
ing of July 1, 1916, when the Anglo-French infantry 
went over the parapets along a twenty-five-mile 
front in the Somme region, and ends with the taking 
of Ginchy by the Irish regiments on Sept. 9th, by 
which date the Allied front formed a symmetrical 
line on high ground, with a section of the Chaulnes- 



£ INTRODUCTION 

Roye Railway, the chief German line of lateral 
communication, held by the French army. 

The author thus explains the object of the great 
drive, about which there exists a considerable 
amount of misconception: "It was not to recover 
so many square miles of France; it was not to take 
Bapaume or Peronne or St. Quentin; it was not even 
in the strict sense to carry this or that position. 
All these things were subsidiary, and would follow 
in due course, provided the main purpose succeeded. 
That purpose was simply to exercise a steady and 
continued pressure in a certain section of the en- 
emy's front." 

The section chosen was one which the Germans 
had converted into what they believed to be an im- 
pregnable fortress — an extended position naturally 
strong, and improved by every device pertaining to 
modern military science; and they were determined 
to hold it at any cost. 

The initial progress of the Anglo-French Army 
is recorded in these pages. It was the triumphant 
debut of Britain's new army. The creation of this 
great fighting machine, largely through voluntary 
enlistment, and out of men who, up to within less 
than two years, had no thought but that of living 
and ending their lives along the paths of peace, and 
who had no previous military training of any kind, 
is a monumental achievement. Indeed, the whole 
manner in which Great Britain has transformed her 
mental and physical attitudes in order properly to 
tackle this grim and ghastly piece of work contributes 
a wonderful chapter to the record of human effort. 

This transformation is one of the most striking 

that mankind has ever made, and the way of it, 

with some needed lessons in method and efficiency 

yet to be learned, is an index of the peace-future of 

the British nation. 

Tx 1 Tr>-,/5 George H. Casam A JOB. 

December, 1916. 



THE 
BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 



CHAPTER I. 
PRELIMINARIES. 

FROM Arras southward the Western battle- 
front leaves the coalpits and sour fields 
of the Artois and enters the pleasant 
region of Picardy. The great crook of the 
upper Somme and the tributary vale of the 
Ancre intersect a rolling tableland, dotted 
with little towns and furrowed by a hundred 
shallow chalk streams. Nowhere does the 
land rise higher than 500 feet, but a trivial 
swell — such is the nature of the landscape — 
may carry the eye for thirty miles. There are 
few detached farms, for it is a country of peasant 
cultivators who cluster in villages. Not a hedge 
breaks the long roll of cornlands, and till the 
higher ground is reached the lines of tall poplars 
flanking the great Roman highroads are the 
chief landmarks. At the lift of country between 
Somme and Ancre copses patch the slopes, and 

8 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

sometimes a church spire is seen above the trees 
from some woodland hamlet. The Somme winds 
in a broad valley between chalk bluffs, faithfully 
dogged by a canal — a curious river which strains, 
like the Oxus, " through matted rushy isles," 
and is sometimes a lake and sometimes an 
expanse of swamp. The Ancre is such a stream 
as may be found in Wiltshire, with good trout 
in its pools. On a hot midsummer day the 
slopes are ablaze with yellow mustard, red 
poppies and blue cornflowers ; and to one coming 
from the lush flats of Flanders, or the " black 
country " of the Pas de Calais, or the dreary 
levels of Champagne, or the strange melancholy 
Verdun hills, this land wears a habitable and 
cheerful air, as if remote from the oppression of 
war. 

The district is known as the Santerre. Some 
derive the name from sana terra — the healthy 
land ; others from sarta terra — the cleared land. 
Some say it is sancta terra, for Peter the Hermit 
was a Picard, and the piety of the Crusaders 
enriched the place with a thousand relics and a 
hundred noble churches. But there are those — 
and they have much to say for themselves — 
who read the name sang terre — the bloody land, 
for the Picard was the Gascon of the north, 
and the countryside is an old cockpit of war. It 

4 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

was the seat of the government of Clovis and 
Charlemagne. It was ravaged by the Normans, 
and time and again by the EngHsh. There 
Louis XI. and Charles the Bold fought their 
battles ; it suffered terribly in the Hundred 
Years' War ; German and Spaniard, the pan- 
dours of Eugene and the Cossacks of Alexander 
marched across its fields ; from the walls of 
Peronne the last shot was fired in the war of 
1814. And in the greatest war of all it was 
destined to be the theatre of a struggle compared 
with which its ancient conflicts were like the 
brawls of a village fair. 

Till Midsummer in 1916 the Picardy front had 
shown little activity. Since that feverish Sep- 
tember when de Castelnau had extended on 
the Allies' left, and Maud'huy beyond de 
Castelnau, in the great race for the North Sea, 
there had been no serious action. Just before 
the Battle of Verdun began the Germans made a 
feint south of the Somme and gained some 
groimd at Frise and Dompierre. There had been 
local raids and local bombardments, but the 
trenches on both sides were good, and a partial 
advance offered few attractions to either. 
Amiens was miles behind one front, vital points 
like St. Quentin and Courtrai and La Fere were 
far behind the other. In that region only a 

5 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

very great and continuous offensive would offer 
any strategic results. In September, 1915, the 
British took over most of the line from Arras to 
the Somme, and on the whole they had a quiet 
winter in their new trenches. This long stag- 
nation led to one result : it enabled the indus- 
trious Germans to excavate the chalk hills on 
which they lay into a fortress which they 
believed to be impregnable. Their position was 
naturally strong, and they strengthened it by 
every device which science could provide. Their 
High Command might look uneasily at the 
Aubers ridge and Lens and Vimy, but they had 
no doubts about the Albert heights. 

THE GERMAN POSITION. 

The German plan in the West, after the first 
offensive had been checked at the Marne and 
Ypres, was to hold their front with abundant 
guns but the bare minimum of men, and use their 
surplus forces to win a decision in the East. 
This scheme was foiled by the heroic steadfast- 
ness of Russia's retreat, which surrendered terri- 
tory freely but kept her armies in being. During 
the winter of 1915-16 the German High Command 
were growing anxious. They saw that their 
march to the Dvina and their adventure in the 




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TEE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

Balkans had wholly failed to shake the resolution 
of their opponents. They were aware that the 
Allies had learned with some exactness the 
lesson of eighteen months of war, and that even 
now they were superior in men, and would 
presently be on an equality in ammunition. 
Moreover, the Allied command was becoming 
concentrated and shaking itself free from its old 
passion for divergent operations. Our generals 
had learned the wisdom of the order of the King 
of Syria to his captains : " Fight neither with 
small nor great but only with the King of Israel " ; 
and the King of Israel did not welcome the 
prospect. 

Now, to quote a famous saying of General 
Foch, " A weakening force must always be 
attacking," and from the beginning of 1916 the 
Central Powers were forced into a continuous 
offensive. Their economic strength was draining 
rapidly. Their people had been told that victory 
was already won, and were asking what had 
become of the fruits of it. They feared greatly 
the coming Allied offensive, for they knew that 
it would be simultaneous on all fronts, and they 
cast about for a means of frustrating it. That 
was the reason of the great Verdun assault. 
Germany hoped, with the obtuseness that has 
always marked her estimate of other races, so 

7 B 



THE BATTLE OF TEE SOMME. 

to weaken the field strength of France that no 
future blow would be possible and the French 
nation, weary and dispirited, would incline to 
peace. She hoped, in any event, to lure the 
Allies into a premature counter-attack, so that 
their great offensive might go off at half-cock and 
be defeated piece-meal. 

None of these things happened. Petain at 
Verdun handled the defence like a master. 
With a wise parsimony he refused to use up 
any unit. When a division had suffered it was 
taken out of the line and replaced by a fresh 
one, so that none of the cadres were destroyed. 
He was willing enough to yield ground, if only 
the enemy paid his price. His aim was not to 
hold territory, for he knew well that he would 
some day regain with interest all he had surren- 
dered, but to destroy the German field army. 
His plan succeeded. The German force was, 
as the French say, accroche at Verdun, and was 
compelled to go on long after any hope of true 
success had vanished. The place became a trap 
where Germany was bleeding to death. Mean- 
while, with the full assent of General Joffre, 
the Generalissimo in the West, the British 
armies made no movement. They were biding 
their time. 

Early in June the ill-conceived Austrian 

8 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

attack on the Trentino had been checked by 
Italy, and suddenly — in the East — Russia swung 
forward to a surprising victory. Within a month 
nearly half a million Austrians had been put 
out of action, and the distressed armies of the 
Dual Monarchy called on Germany for help. 
The inevitable von Hindenburg was brought 
into play, and such divisions as could be spared 
were despatched from the West. At this moment, 
when the grip was tightening in the East, France 
and Britain made ready for the supreme effort 
of the war. 

Germany's situation was intricate and uneasy. 
She had no large surplus of men immediately 
available at her interior depots. The wounded 
who were ready again for the line and the 
young recruits from the 1917 class were all 
needed to fill up the normal wastage in her 
ranks. She had no longer any great mass of 
strategic reserves. Most had been sucked into 
the maelstrom of Verdun or despatched East 
to von Hindenburg. At the best, she had a 
certain number of divisions which represented 
a local and temporary surplus in some particular 
area. Beyond these she could only get reinforce- 
ments by the process known as " milking the 
line " — taking out a battalion here and a 
battalion there — an expedient both cumbrous 

9 b2 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

and wasteful, for these battalions were not 
fresh troops, and their removal was bound to 
leave many parts of her front perilously thin. 
Germany in the West was holding a huge 
salient — from the North Sea to Soissons, and 
from Soissons to Verdun. If a wedge were 
driven in on one side the whole apex would 
be in deadly danger. The Russian field army 
could retire safely from Warsaw and Vilna, 
because it was mobile and lightly equipped, 
but an army which had been stationary for 
eighteen months and had relied mainly upon 
its fortifications would be apt to find a Sedan 
in any retirement. The very strength of the 
German front in the West constituted its 
weakness. A breach in a fluid line may be 
mended, but a breach in a rigid and most 
intricate front cannot be filled unless there 
are large numbers of men available for the 
task or unlimited time. We have seen that 
there were no such numbers, and it was likely 
that the Allies would see that there was no 
superfluity of leisure. 

The path of wisdom for Germany in June 
was undoubtedly to fall back in good order 
to a much shortened line, which with her 
numbers might be strongly held. There is 
reason to believe that soon after the beginning 

10 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

of the Allied bombardment some such policy 
was considered. The infantry commanders of 
the 17th Corps were warned to be prepared 
for long marches and heavy rearguard fighting, 
instructions were given for holding bridge- 
heads far in the rear, and officers were advised 
that the retreat might be either a retirement 
at ease or a withdrawal under pressure from 
the enemy. Had such a course been taken it 
would have been unfortunate for the Allied 
plans. But such a course was impossible. 
The foolish glorification after the naval battle 
of May 31 forbade it. The German people 
had been buoyed up under the discomfort 
of the British blockade by tales ot decisive 
successes in the field. The German Chancellor 
had almost tearfully implored his enemies to 
look at the map, to consider the extent of 
German territorial gains, and to admit that 
they were beaten. He was one of those who did 
not fulfil Foch's definition of military wisdom. 
" The true soldier is the man who ignores that 
science of geographical points which is alien to 
war, which is the negation of war and the sure 
proof of decadence, the man who knows and 
follows one vital purpose — to smash the enemy's 
field force." The dancing dervishes of Pan- 
Germanism had already announced in detail 

11 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

the use to which the occupied territories would 
be put. For Germany to fall back from the 
Somme to the Meuse would have toppled 
down the whole flimsy edifice of German con- 
fidence. It was unthinkable ; her political 
commitments were too great ; her earlier 
vainglory sat like an Old Man of the Sea on her 
shoulders. 

Yet, in spite of this weakness in the strategic 
situation, the German stronghold in the West 
was still formidable in the extreme. From 
Arras southward they held in the main the 
higher ground. The front consisted of a strong 
first position, with firing, support, and reserve 
trenches and a labyrinth of deep dug-outs ; 
a less strong intermediate line covering the 
field batteries ; and a second position some 
distance behind, which was of much the same 
strength as the first. Behind lay fortified woods 
and villages which could be readily linked 
up with trench lines to form third and fourth 
positions. The attached trench map will give 
some idea of the amazing complexity of the 
German defences. They were well served by 
the great network of railways which radiate 
from La Fere and Laon, Cambrai, and St. 
Quentin, and many new light lines had been 
constructed. They had ample artillery and 

12 



\PiJ/ y^^ j\( 




THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

shells, endless machine-guns, and consummate 
skill in using them. It was a fortress to which 
no front except the West could show a parallel. 
In the East the line was patchy and not con- 
tinuous. The Russian soldiers who in the early- 
summer were brought to France stared with 
amazement at a ramification of trenches com- 
pared with which the lines in Poland and 
Galicia were like hurried improvisations. 

THE BRITISH ARMIES, 

The British Armies had in less than two 
years grown from the six divisions of the old 
Expeditionary Force to a total of some seventy 
divisions in the field, leaving out of account 
the troops supplied by the Dominions and by 
India. Behind these divisions were masses of 
trained men to replace wastage for at least 
another year. With the possible exception of 
France, Great Britain had mobilised for the 
direct and indirect purposes of war a larger 
proportion of her population than any 
other belligerent country. Moreover while 
engaged in also supplying her Allies, she 
had provided this vast levy with all its 
necessary equipment. Britain is so fond of 
decrying her own efforts that few people have 

13 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

realised the magnitude of her achievement. 
There is no precedent for it in the history of the 
world. She jettisoned all her previous theories 
and calculations ; and in a society which had 
not for a hundred years been called upon to 
make a great effort against an enemy, a society 
highly differentiated and industrialised, a society 
which lived by sea-borne commerce and so 
could not concentrate like certain other lands 
exclusively on military preparation, she provided 
an army on the largest scale, and provided it 
out of next to nothing. She had to improvise 
officers and staff, auxiliary services, munition- 
ment — everything. She had to do this in the 
face of an enemy already fully prepared. She 
had to do it, above all, at a time when war had 
become a desperately technical and scientific 
business and improvisation was most difficult. 
It is easy enough to assemble quickly hordes of 
spearmen and pikemen, but it would seem 
impossible to improvise men to use the bayonet 
and machine gun, the bomb and the rifle. But 
Britain did it — and did it for the most part by 
voluntary enlistment. 

The quality of the result was not less remark- 
able than the quantity. The efficiency of the 
supply and transport, the medical services, the 
aircraft work, was universally admitted. Our 

14 




h 2 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

staff and intelligence work — most difficult to 
improvise— was now equal to the best in the 
field. Our gunnery was praised by the French, 
a nation of expert gunners. As for the troops 
themselves we had secured a homogeneous 
army of which it was hard to say that one part 
was better than the other. The original Expedi- 
tionary Force — the " Old Contemptibles," who 
for their size were probably the best body of 
fighting men on earth — had mostly disappeared. 
Territorial battalions were present at the First 
Battle of Ypres, and New Service battalions at 
Hooge and Loos. By June, 1916, the term New 
Armies was a misnomer. The whole British force 
in one sense was new. The famous old regi- 
ments of the line had been completely renewed 
since Mons, and their drafts were drawn from 
the same source as the men of the new battalions. 
The only difference was that in the historic 
battalions there was a tradition already existing, 
whereas in the new battalions that tradition had 
to be created. And the creation was quick. If 
the Old Army bore the brunt of the First Battle 
of Ypres, the Territorials were no less heroic in 
the Second Battle of Ypres, and the New Army 
had to its credit the four-mile charge at Loos. 
It was no patchwork force which in June was 
drawn up in Picardy, but the flower of the man- 

15 



TEE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

hood of the British Empire, differing in origin 
and antecedents, but alike in discipline and 
courage and resolution. 

Munitions had grown with the numbers of men. 
Anyone who was present at Ypres in April and 
May, 1915, saw the German guns all day pound- 
ing our lines with only a feeble and intermittent 
reply. It was better at Loos in September, 
when we showed that we could achieve an 
intense bombardment. But at that date our 
equipment sufficed only for spasmodic efforts 
and not for that sustained and continuous fire 
which was needed to destroy the enemy's de- 
fences. Things were very different in June, 1916. 
Ever5rwhere on the long British front there were 
British guns — heavy guns of all calibres, field 
guns innumerable, and in the trenches there were 
quantities of trench-mortars. The great muni- 
tion dumps, constantly depleted and constantly 
replenished from distant bases, showed that 
there was food and to spare for this mass of 
artillery, and in the factories and depots at home 
every minute saw the reserves growing. Britain 
was manufacturing and issuing weekly as much 
as the whole stock of land service ammunition 
which she possessed at the outbreak of war. The 
production of high explosives was sixty-six times 
what it had been at the beginning of 1915. The 

16 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

monthly output of heavy guns had been multi- 
plied by six in the past year, and that of machine- 
guns by fourteen. We no longer fought against 
a far superior machine. We had created our 
own machine to nullify the enemy's and allow 
our man-power to come to grips. 

THE GREAT BOMBARDMENT, 

About the middle of June on the whole ninety- 
mile front held by the British, and on the French 
front north and south of the Somme there began 
an intermittent bombardment of the German 
lines. There were raids at different places, 
partly to mislead the enemy as to the real point 
of assault, and partly to identify the German 
units opposed to us. Such raids varied widely in 
method, but they were extraordinarily successful. 
Sometimes gas was used, but more often after 
a short bombardment a picked detachment 
crossed no-man's-land, cut the enemy's wire, 
and dragged home a score or two of prisoners. 
One, conducted by a company of the Highland 
Light Infantry near the Vermelles-La Bassee 
Road, deserves special mention. Our guns had 
damaged the German parapets, so when dark- 
ness came a German working-party was put in 
to mend them. The Scots, while the engineers 

17 



TEE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

neatly cut off a section of German trenches, 
swooped down on the place, investigated the 
dug-outs, killed two score Germans, brought 
back forty-six prisoners, and had for total 
casualties two men slightly wounded. During 
these days, too, there were many fights in the air. 
It was essential to prevent German airplanes 
from crossing our front and observing our 
preparations. Our own machines scouted far 
into the enemy hinterland, reconnoitring and 
destroying. 

On Sunday, June 25th, the bombardment 
became intenser. It fell everywhere on the 
front ; German trenches were obliterated at 
Ypres and Arras as well as at Beaumont 
Hamel and Fricourt. There is nothing harder 
to measure than the relative force of such a 
" preparation," but had a dispassionate observer 
been seated in the clouds he would have noted 
that from Gommecourt to a mile or two south 
of the Somme the Allied fire was especially 
methodical and persistent. On Wednesday, 
June 28th, from an artillery observation post 
in that region it seemed as if a complete 
devastation had been achieved. Some things 
like broken telegraph poles were all that remained 
of what, a week before, had been leafy copses. 
Villages had become heaps of rubble. Travelling 

18 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

at night on the roads behind the front — from 
Bethune to Amiens — the whole eastern sky was 
Ht up with what seemed fitful summer lightning. 
But there was curiously little noise. In Amiens, 
a score or so of miles from the firing line, the 
guns were rarely heard, whereas fifty miles 
from Ypres they sound like a roll of drums 
and wake a man in the night. The configuration 
of that part of Picardy muffles sound, and the 
country folk call it the Silent Land. 

All the last week of June the weather was 
grey and cloudy, with a thick brume on the 
uplands, which made air-work unsatisfactory. 
There were flying showers of rain and the roads 
were deep in mire. At the front — through the 
haze — the guns flashed incessantly, and there 
was that tense expectancy which precedes a 
great battle. Troops were everywhere on the 
move, and the shifting of ammunition dumps 
nearer to the firing-line foretold what was 
coming. There was a curious exhilaration 
everywhere. Men felt that this at last was 
the great offensive, that this was no flash in 
the pan, but a movement conceived on the 
grand scale as to guns and men which would 
not cease until a decision was reached. But, 
as the hours passed in mist and wet, it seemed 
as if the fates were unpropitious. Then, on 

19 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

the last afternoon of June, there came a sudden 
change. The pall of cloud cleared away and 
all Picardy swam in the translucent blue of a 
summer evening. That night the orders went 
out. The attack was to be delivered next 
morning three hours after dawn. 

The first day of July dawned hot and cloud- 
less, though a thin fog, the relic of the damp 
of the past week, clung to the hollows. At half- 
past five the hill just west of Albert offered a 
singular view. It was almost in the centre of 
the section allotted to the Allied attack, and 
from it the eye could range on the left up and 
beyond the Ancre glen to the high ground 
around Beaumont Hamel and Serre ; in front 
to the great lift of tableland beyond which 
lay Bapaume ; and to the right past the woods 
of Fricourt to the valley of the Somme. All 
the slopes to the east were wreathed in smoke, 
which blew aside now and then and revealed a 
patch of wood or a church spire. In the fore- 
ground lay Albert, the target of an occasional 
German shell, with its shattered Church of 
Notre Dame de Bebrieres and the famous gilt 
Virgin hanging head downward from the 
campanile. All along the Allied front, a couple 
of miles behind the line, captive balloons, 
the so-called "sausages," glittered in the sun- 

20 



TEE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

light. Every gun on a front of twenty-five 
miles was speaking, and speaking without pause. 
In that week's bombardment more light and 
medium ammunition was expended than the 
total amount manufactured in Britain during 
the first eleven months of war, while the heavy 
stuff produced during the same period would 
not have kept our guns going for a single day. 
Great spurts of dust on the slopes showed where 
a heavy shell had burst, and black and white 
gouts of smoke dotted the middle distance 
like the little fires in a French autumn field. 
Lace-like shrapnel wreaths hung in the sky, 
melting into the morning haze. The noise was 
strangely uniform, a steady rumbling, as if 
the solid earth were muttering in a nightmare, 
and it was hard to distinguish the deep tones 
of the heavies, the vicious whip-like crack of 
the field-guns and the bark of the trench-mortars. 
About 7.15 the bombardment rose to that 
hurricane pitch of fury which betokened its 
close. Then appeared a marvellous sight, 
the solid spouting of the enemy slopes — as if 
they were lines of reefs on which a strong 
tide was breaking. In such a hell it seemed 
that no human thing could live. Through the 
thin summer vapour and the thicker smoke 
which clung to the foreground there were 

21 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

visions of a countryside actually moving — 
moving bodily in debris into the air. And now 
there was a new sound — a series of abrupt and 
rapid bursts which came gustily from the 
first lines, like some colossal machine-gun. 
These were the new trench mortars — ^those 
wonderful little engines of death. There was 
another sound, too, from the North, as if the 
cannonading had suddenly come nearer. It 
looked as if the Germans had begun a counter- 
bombardment on part of the British front line. 
The staff officers glanced at their watches, 
and at half-past seven precisely there came 
a lull. It lasted for a second or two, and then 
the guns continued their tale. But the range 
had been lengthened everywhere, and from a 
bombardment the fire had become a barrage. 
For, on a twenty-five mile front, the Allied 
infantry had gone over the parapets. 



22 




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THE STOOPING LADY OF ALBERT. 




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THE ADVANCE FROxAI THE TRENCHES 




1. CROSSING THE PARAPETS. 




2. PASSING THROUGH THE BRITISH WIRE. 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

CHAPTER II. 

THE FIRST STAGE. 

The point of view of the hill-top was not 
that of the men in the front trenches. The 
crossing of the parapets is the supreme moment 
in modern war. What has been the limit 
suddenly becomes the starting point. The 
troops are outside defences, moving across the 
open to investigate the unknown. It is the 
culmination of months of training for officers 
and men, and the least sensitive feels the 
drama of the crisis. Most of the British 
troops engaged had twenty months before 
been employed in peaceable civilian trades. 
In their ranks were every class and condition — 
miners from north England, factory hands 
from the industrial centres, clerks and shop- 
boys, ploughmen and shepherds, Saxon and 
Celt, college graduates and dock labourers, 
men who in the wild places of the earth had 
often faced danger, and men whose chief 
adventure had been a Sunday bicycle ride. 
Nerves may be attuned to the normal risks of 
trench warfare and yet shrink from the desperate 
hazard of a charge into the enemy's line. 

23 c 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

But to one who visited the front before 

the attack the most vivid impression was 

that of quiet cheerfulness. These soldiers 

of Britain were like Cromwell's Ironsides, 

they " knew what they fought for and 

loved what they knew." There were no 

shirkers and few who wished themselves 

elsewhere. One man's imagination might 

be more active than another's, but the 

will to fight, and to fight desperately, was 

universal. With the happy gift of the British 

soldier they had turned the ghastly business 

of war into something homely and familiar. 

They found humour in danger and discomfort, 

and declined to regard the wildest crisis as 

wholly divorced from their normal life. 

Accordingly they took everything as part of 

the day's work, and awaited the supreme 

moment without heroics and without tremor, 

confident in themselves, confident in their 

guns, and confident in the triumph of their 

cause. There was no savage lust of battle, 

but that far more formidable thing — a resolution 

which needed no rhetoric to support it. Norfolk's 

words were true of every man of them : 

" As gentle and as jocund as to jest 
Go I to fight. Truth hath a quiet breast." 

A letter written before the action by a young 

24 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

officer gives noble expression to this joyful resolu- 
tion. He fell in the first day's battle and the 
letter was posted after his death : — 

" I am writing this letter to you just before 
going into action to-morrow morning about dawn. 

" I am about to take part in the biggest battle 
that has yet been fought in France, and one which 
ought to help to end the war very quickly. 

" I never felt more confident or cheerful in my 
life before, and would not miss the attack for 
anything on earth. The men are in splendid form, 
and every officer and man is more happy and 
cheerful than I have ever seen them. I have just 
been playing a rag game of football in which the 
umpire had a revolver and a whistle. 

" My idea in writing this letter is in case I am 
one of the ' costs,' and get killed. I do not expect 
to be, but such things have happened, and are 
always possible. 

" It is impossible to fear death out here when 
one is no longer an individual, but a member of a 
regiment and of an army. To be killed means 
nothing to me, and it is only you who suffer for it ; 
you really pay the cost. 

" I have been looking at the stars, and thinking 
what an immense distance they are away. What 
an insignificant thing the loss of, say, 40 years of 
life is compared with them ! It seems scarcely 
worth talking about. 

" Well, good-bye, you darlings. Try not to 
worry about it, and remember that we shall meet 
again really quite soon. 

35 C2 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

" This letter is going to be posted if . . . Lots 
of love. From your loving son, 

" Qui procul hinc 
Ante diem periit, 
Sed miles, sed pro Patria." 

The British aim in this, the opening stage 
of the battle, was the German first position. 
The attached map shows its general line. In 
the section of assault, running from north to 
south, it covered Gommecourt, passed east of 
Hebuterne, followed the high ground in front 
of Serre and Beaumont Hamel, and crossed the 
Ancre a little to the north-west of Thiepval. It 
ran in front of Thiepval, which was very strongly 
fortified, east of Authuille, and just covered the 
hamlets of Ovillers and La Boisselle. There it ran 
about a mile and a quarter east of Albert. 
It then passed south round the woodland village 
of Fricourt, where it turned at right angles to 
the east, covering Mametz and Montauban, 
Half-way between Maricourt and Hardecourt it 
turned south again, covered Curlu, crossed the 
Somme at the wide marsh near the place called 
Vaux, covered Frise and Dompierre and Soye- 
court, and passed just east of Lihons, where it 
left the sector with which we are now concerned. 
The position was held by the right wing of the 
2nd Army (formerly von Buelow's, but now under 

26 



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THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

von Below, a brother of the General commanding 
on the extreme left in Poland), and the troops 
in line opposite the British on July 1st were 
principally the 14th Reserve Corps, made up 
of Baden, Wurtemberg and Bavarian divisions. 

GOMMECOURT TO THIEPVAL. 

It is clear that the Germans expected the 
attack of the Allies and had made a fairly 
accurate guess as to its terrain. They assumed 
that the area would be from Arras to Albert. 
In all that area they were ready with a full 
concentration of men and guns. South of 
Albert they were less prepared, and south of 
the Somme they were caught napping. The 
history of the first day is therefore the story of 
two separate actions in the north and south, in 
the first of which the Allies failed and in the 
second of which they brilliantly succeeded. By 
the evening the first action had definitely closed, 
and the weight of the Allies was flung wholly 
into the second. That is almost inevitable in an 
attack on a very broad front. Some part will 
be found tougher than the rest, and that part 
having been tried will be relinquished ; but it 
is the stubbornness of the knot and the failure 
to take it which are the price of success elsewhere. 

28 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

Let us first tell the tale of the desperate struggle 
between Gommecourt and Thiepval. 

The divisions in action there were mainly 
from the New Army, though there were two of 
the old regulars, which had won fame both in 
Flanders and Gallipoli. They had to face a 
chain of fortified villages — Gommecourt, Serre, 
Beaumont Hamel, and Thiepval — and enemy 
positions which were generally on higher and 
better ground. The Ancre cut the line in two, 
with steep slopes rising from the valley bottom. 
Each village had been so fortified as to be almost 
impregnable, with a maze of catacombs, often 
two storeys deep, where whole battalions could 
take refuge, underground passages from the 
firing line to sheltered places in the rear, and 
pits into which machine guns could be lowered 
during a bombardment. On the plateau behind, 
with excellent direct observation, the Germans 
had their guns massed. 

It was this direct observation and the deep 
shelters for machine-guns which were the un- 
doing of the British attack from Gommecourt 
to Thiepval. As our bombardment grew more 
intense on the morning of July 1st, so did the 
enemy's. Before our men could go over the 
parapets the Germans had plastered our front 
trenches with high explosives and in many 

29 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

places blotted them out. All along our line, 
fifty yards before and behind the first trench, 
they dropped 6-in. and 8-in. high explosive 
shells. The result was that our men instead 
of forming up in the front trench were compelled 
to form up in the open ground behind, for the 
frcmt trench had disappeared. In addition to 
this there was an intense shrapnel barrage which 
must have been directed by observers, for 
it followed our troops as they moved for- 
ward. 

At Beaumont Hamel we had constructed a 
mine, the largest known in the campaign. At 
7.30 acres of land leaped into the air, and our 
men advanced under the shadow of a pall of 
dust which turned the morning into twilight. 
" The exploding chamber," said a sergeant, 
describing it afterwards, " was as big as a picture 
palace, and the gallery was an awful length. 
It took us seven months to build, and we were 
working under some of the crack Lancashire 
miners. Every time a fresh fatigue party came 
up they'd say to the miners, ' Ain't your 
etceteraed grotto ever going up ? ' But, my 
lord ! it went up all right on July 1st. It was 
the sight of your life. Half the village got a rise. 
The air was full of stuff — waggons, wheels, horses, 
tins, boxes and Germans. It was seven months 

30 



TEE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

well spent getting that mine ready. I believe 
some of the pieces are coming down still." 

As we began to cross no-man's-land, the Ger- 
mans seemed to man their ruined parapets, and 
fired rapidly with automatic rifles and machine- 
guns. They had special light moicsqueton bat- 
talions, armed only with machine-guns, who 
showed marvellous intrepidity, some even push- 
ing their guns forward into no-man's-land to 
enfilade our advance. The British moved 
forward in line after line, dressed as if 
on parade ; not a man wavered or broke 
rank ; but minute by minute the ordered 
lines melted away under the deluge of 
high-explosive, shrapnel, rifle and machine-gun 
fire. There was no question about the German 
weight of artillery. From dawn till long after 
noon they maintained this steady drenching 
fire. Gallant individuals or isolated detach- 
ments managed here and there to break into the 
enemy position, and some even penetrated well 
behind it, but these were episodes, and the ground 
they won could not be held. By the evening, 
from Gommecourt to Thiepval, the attack had 
been everywhere checked, and our troops — 
what was left of them — were back again in their 
old line. They had struck the core of the main 
German defence. 

31 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

In this stubborn action against impossible 
odds the gallantry was so universal and absolute 
that it is idle to select special cases. In each 
mile there were men who performed the incredible. 
Nearly every English, Scots and Irish regiment 
was represented, as well as Midland and London 
Territorials, a gallant little company of Rho- 
desians, and a Newfoundland battalion drawn 
from the hard-bitten fishermen of that iron 
coast, who lost terribly on the slopes of Beaumont 
Hamel. Repeatedly the German position was 
pierced. At Serre fragments of two battalions 
pushed as far as Pendant Copse, 2,000 yards 
from the British lines. North of Thiepval 
troops broke through the enemy trenches, 
passed the crest of the ridge and reached the 
point called The Crucifix, in rear of the first 
German position. Not the least gallant of 
these exploits was that of the Ulster Division at 
the death-trap where the slopes south of Beau- 
mont Hamel sink to the Ancre. It was the 
anniversary day of the Battle of the Boyne, and 
that charge when the men shouted " Remember 
the Boyne " will be for ever a glorious page in 
the annals of Ireland. The Royal Irish Fusiliers 
were first out of the trenches. The Royal Irish 
Rifles followed them over the German parapets, 
bayoneting the machine-gunners, and the Innis- 

82 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

killings cleared the trenches to which they had 
given Irish names. Enfiladed on three sides 
they went on through successive German lines, 
and only a remnant came back to tell the tale. 
That remnant brought many prisoners, one 
man herding fifteen of the enemy through their 
own barrage. In the words of the General who 
commanded it : — " The division carried out 
every portion of its allotted task in spite of the 
heaviest losses. It captured nearly 600 prisoners 
and carried its advance triumphantly to the 
limits of the objective laid down." Nothing 
finer was done in the war. The splendid troops, 
drawn from those volunteers who had banded 
themselves together for another cause, now 
shed their blood like water for the liberty of 
the world. 

That grim struggle from Thiepval northward 
was responsible for by far the greater number of 
the Allied losses of the day. But, though 
costly, it was not fruitless, for it occupied the 
bulk of the German defence. It was the 
price which had to be paid for the advance 
of the rest of the front. For, while in the 
north the living wave broke vainly and gained 
little, in the south " by creeks and inlets 
making " the tide was flowing strongly shore- 
ward, 

83 



THE BATTLE OF THE S03IME, 

THE SOUTHERN SECTION. 

The map will show that Fricourt forms a 
bold salient ; and it was the Allied purpose not 
to assault this salient but to cut it off. An 
advance on Ovillers and La Boisselle and up 
the long shallow depression towards Contal- 
maison, which our men called Sausage Valley, 
would, if united with the carrying of Mametz, 
pinch it so tightly that it must fall. Ovillers 
and La Boisselle were strongly fortified villages, 
and on this first day, while we won the outskirts 
and carried the entrenchments before them, 
we did not control the ruins which our guns had 
pounded out of the shape of habitable dwellings. 
Just west of Fricourt a division was engaged 
which had suffered grave misfortunes at Loos. 
That day it got its own back, for it made no 
mistake, but poured resolutely into the angle 
east of Sausage Valley. 

Before evening Mametz fell. Its church stood 
up, a broken tooth of masonry among the 
shattered houses, with an amphitheatre of 
splintered woods behind and around it. South 
of it ran a high road, and south of the road lay 
a little hill, with the German trench lines on 
the southern side. The division which took 
the place was one of the most famous in the 

34 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

British Army. It had fought at First Ypres, 
at Festubert and at Loos. Since the autumn of 
1914 it had been changed in its composition, 
but there were in it battalions which had been 
for twenty months in the field. The whole 
division, old and new alike, went forward to their 
task as if it were their first day of war. On 
the slopes of the little hill three battalions 
advanced in line — one from a southern English 
county, one from a northern city, one of High- 
land regulars. They carried everything before 
them, and to one who followed their track the 
regularity of their advance was astonishing, 
for the dead lay aligned as if on some parade. 

Montauban fell early in the day. The British 
lines lay in the hollow north of the Albert- 
Peronne road, where stands the hamlet of Carnoy. 
On the crest of the ridge beyond lay Montauban, 
now, like most Santerre villages, a few broken 
walls set among splintered trees. The brick- 
fields on the right were expected to be the scene 
of a fierce struggle, but, to our amazement, they 
had been so shattered by our guns that they were 
taken easily. The Montauban attack was the 
most perfect of the episodes of the day. The 
artillery had done its work, and the 6th Bavarian 
Regiment opposed to us lost 3,000 out of a total 
strength of 3,500. The division which formed 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

the British right wing advanced in parade order 
to a speedy success. Here is an extract from a 
soldier's narrative : 

As we were going into Montauban we saw a 
German machine-gunner up a tree. He'd got 
the neatest Httle platform you ever saw, painted 
so that it was almost invisible. We shot him 
down, but he didn't fall clear, and the last we 
saw of him he was hanging by his boots from the 
branches. . . . The spirit of our boys was 
splendid. They simply loved the show. One 
of them got blown up by a shell. He seemed 
pretty dazed, but he picked himself up and came 
along. All he said was, *' Oh, there must be a 
war on after all, I suppose." 

At that point was seen a sight hitherto un- 
witnessed in the campaign— the advance in line 
of the troops of Britain and France. On the 
British right lay a French Army, whose left 
wing was the famous " iron " Corps — ^the Corps 
which had held the Grand Couronn6 of 
Nancy in the feverish days of the Marne 
battle, and which by its counter-attack at 
Douaumont on that snowy 26th of February 
had turned the tide at Verdun. It was the 
" Division de Fer " itself which moved in line 
with the British — horizon-blue beside khaki, 
and behind both the comforting bark of the 
incomparable " 75's." 

3^ 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

From the point of junction for eight miles 
southward the French advanced with Hghtning 
speed and complete success. The enemy was 
taken unawares. Officers were captured shav- 
ing in the dug-outs, whole battalions were 
rounded up, and all was done with the minimum 
of loss. One French regiment had two casualties ; 
800 was the total of one division. Long ere the 
evening the French were on the edge of Harde- 
court and Curlu, and the villages of Dompierre, 
Becquincourt, Bussu and Fay were in their hands. 
The German first position in its entirety had 
been captured from Mametz to Fay, a front of 
fourteen miles. Some 6,000 prisoners fell to the 
Allies, and great quantities of guns and stores. 
In the powdered trenches, in the woods and 
fields behind, and in the labyrinth of ruined 
dwellings the German dead lay thick. " That 
is the purpose of the battle," said a French 
soldier. " We do not want guns, for Krupp can 
make them faster than we can take them. 
But Krupp cannot make men." 

To walk over the captured ground was to 
learn a profound respect for the beaver-like 
industry of the German soldier. His fatigue- 
work must have reached the heroic scale. The 
old firing trenches were so badly smashed by our 
guns that it was hard to follow them, but what 

37 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

was left was good. The soil of the place is the 
best conceivable for digging, for it cuts like 
cheese, and hardens like brick in dry weather. 
The map shows a ramification of little red lines, 
but only the actual sight of that labyrinth could 
give a due impression of its strength. One 
communication trench, for example, was a 
tunnel a hundred yards long, lined with timber 
throughout, and so deep as to be beyond the 
reach of the heaviest shells. The small man- 
holes used for snipers' posts were skilfully con- 
trived. Tunnels led to them from the trenches, 
and the openings were artfully screened by 
casual-looking debris. But the greatest marvels 
were the dug-outs. One at Fricourt had nine 
rooms and five bolt-holes ; it had iron doors, gas 
curtains, linoleum on the floors, wallpaper and 
pictures on the walls, and boasted a good bath- 
room, electric light and electric bells. The 
staff which occupied it must have lived in luxury. 
Many of these dug-outs had two-storeys, a 
thirty foot staircase, beautifully furnished, lead- 
ing to the first suite, and a second stair of the 
same length conducting to a lower storey. In 
such places machine-guns could be protected 
during any bombardment. But the elaboration 
of such dwellings went far beyond military needs. 
When the Germans boasted that their front on 

38 




O 
< 



THE BATTLE OP THE SOMME. 

the West was impregnable they sincerely be- 
lieved it. They thought they had established 
a continuing city, from which they would emerge 
only at a triumphant peace. The crumbling — 
not of their front trenches only but of their 
whole first position — was such a shock as King 
Priam's court must have received when the 
Wooden Horse disgorged the Greeks in the heart 
of their citadel. 

It was not won without stark fighting. The 
Allied soldiers were quick to kindle in the fight, 
and more formidable figures than those bronzed 
steel-hatted warriors history has never seen 
on a field of battle. Those who witnessed 
the charge of the Highlanders at Loos were 
not likely to forget its fierce resolution. Said 
a French officer who was present : "I don't 
know what effect it had on the Boche, but 
it made my blood run cold.'* Our men were 
fighting against the foes of humanity and they did 
not make war as a joke. But there was none 
of the savagery which comes either from a 
half-witted militarism or from rattled nerves. 
The Germans had been officially told that the 
English took no prisoners, and this falsehood, 
while it made the stouter fellows fight to the 
death, sent scores of poor creatures huddling 
in dug-outs, from which they had to be extracted 

89 D 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

like shell-fish. But, after surrender, there was 
no brutality — very much the reverse. As one 
watched the long line of wounded — ^the 
" walking cases " — straggling back from the 
firing line to a dressing-station, they might 
have been all of one side. One picture remains 
in the memory. Two wounded Gordon 
Highlanders were hobbling along, and supported 
between them a wounded Badener. The last 
seen of the trio was that the Scots were giving 
him water and cigarettes, and he was cutting 
buttons from his tunic as souvenirs for his 
comforters. A letter of an officer on this point 
is worth quoting : 

" The more I see of war the more I am con- 
vinced of the fundamental decency of our own 
folk. They may have a crude taste in music 
and art and things of that sort ; they may lack 
the patient industry of the Boche ; but for sheer 
goodness of heart, for kindness to all unfortunate 
things, like prisoners, wounded, animals and ugly 
women, they fairly beat the band." 

It is the kind of tribute which most Britons 
would prefer to any other. 

THE FOLLOWING DAYS. 

Sunday, the 2nd of July, w^as a day of level 
heat, in which the dust stood in steady walls 

40 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

on every road behind the front and in the 
tortured areas of the captured ground. The 
success of the Saturday had, as we have seen, 
put our right well in advance of our centre, 
and it was necessary to bring forward the left 
part of the line from Thiepval to Fricourt 
so as to make the breach in the German position 
uniform over a broad enough front. Accordingly, 
all that day there was a fierce struggle at 
Ovillers and La Boisselle. At the former village 
we won the entrenchments before it, and late 
in the evening we succeeded in entering the 
labyrinth of cellars, the ruins of what had been 
La Boisselle. As yet there was no counter- 
attack. The surprise in the south had been too 
great, and the Germans had not yet brought 
up their reserve divisions. All that day 
squadrons of Allied airplanes bombed depots 
and lines of communications in the German 
hinterland. The long echelons of the Allied 
" sausages " glittered in the sun, but only 
one German kite balloon could be detected^ 
We had found a way of bombing those fragile 
gas-bags and turning them into wisps of flame. 
The Fokkers strove in vain to check our airmen, 
and at least two were brought crashing to the 
earth. 

At 2 in the afternoon of Sunday Fricourt fell, 

41 d2 



TEE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

the taking of Mametz and the positions won 
in the Fricourt Wood to the east had made its 
capture certain. During the night part of 
the garrison slipped out, but when our men 
entered it, bombing from house to house, they 
made a great haul of prisoners and guns. " Like 
a Belfast riot on the top of Vesuvius," was an 
Irish soldier's description of the fight. Further 
south the French continued their victorious 
progress. They destroyed a German counter- 
attack on the new position at Hardecourt ; 
they took Curlu; and, south of the river, they 
took Frise and the wood of Mereaucourt beyond 
it. They did more, for at many points between 
the river and Assevilliers they broke into the 
German second position. 

On Monday, July 3rd, General von Below 
issued an order to his troops, which showed 
that, whatever the German Press might say, 
the German soldiers had no delusion as to the 
gravity of the Allied offensive. 

" The decisive issue of the war depends on the 
victory of the 2nd Army on the Somme. We 
must win this battle in spite of the enemy's tem- 
porary superiority in artillery and infantry. The 
important ground lost in certain places will be 
recaptured by our attack after the arrival of 
reinforcements. The vital thing is to hold on 
to our present positions at all costs and to improve 

42 



TEE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

them. I forbid the voluntary evacuation of 
trenches. The will to stand firm must be im- 
pressed on every man in the army. The enemy 
should have to carve his way over heaps of 
corpses. ... I require commanding officers 
to devote their utmost energies to the establish- 
ment of order behind the front." 

Von Below had correctly estimated the 
position. The old ground, with all it held, 
must be re- won if possible ; no more must be 
lost ; fresh lines must be constructed in the 
rear. But the new improvised lines could be 
no equivalent of those mighty fastnesses which 
represented the work of eighteen months. 
Therefore those fastnesses must be regained. 
We shall learn how ill his enterprise prospered. 

For a correct understanding of the position 
on Monday, July 8rd, it is necessary to recall 
the exact alignment of the new British front. 
It fell into two sections. The first lay from 
Thiepval to Fricourt, and was bisected by the 
Albert-Bapaume road, which ran like an arrow 
over the watershed. Here Thiepval, Ovillers, 
and La Boisselle were positions in the German 
first line. Contalmaison, to the east of La 
Boisselle, was a strongly fortified village on 
high ground, which formed, so to speak, a 
pivot in the German intermediate line — the 
line which covered their field-guns. The second 

48 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

position ran through Pozieres to the two 
Bazentins. On the morning of July 3rd the 
British had not got Thiepval, nor Ovillers ; 
they had only a portion of La Boisselle, but 
south of it they had broken through the first 
position and were well on the road to Contal- 
maison. All this northern section consisted of 
bare undulating slopes — once covered with 
crops, but now like some lunar desert where 
life was forbidden. Everywhere it was seamed 
with the scars of trenches and pock-marked 
with shell holes. The few trees lining the roads 
had been long razed, and the only vegetation 
was coarse grass, thistles, and the ubiquitous 
poppy and mustard. 

The southern section, from Fricourt to 
Montauban, was of a different character. It 
was patched with large woods, curiously clean 
cut like the copses in the park of a country- 
house. A line of them ran from Fricourt north- 
eastward — Fricourt Wood, Bottom Wood, the 
big wood of Mametz, the woods of Bazentin, 
and the wood of Foureaux, which our men 
called High Wood ; while from Montauban 
I an a second line, the woods of Bernafay and 
Trones and Delville Wood around Longueval. 
Here all the German first position had been 
captured. The second position ran through the 

44 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

Bazentins, Longueval, and Guillemont, but 
to reach it some difficult woodland country 
had to be traversed. On July 3rd, therefore, 
the southern half of the British line was 
advancing against the enemy's second position, 
while the northern half had still for its objective 
Ovillers and La Boisselle in the first position 
and the intermediate point, Contalmaison. 

LA BOISSELLE, OVILLERS AND 
CONTALMAISON. 

It will be most convenient to take the two 
sections separately, since their problems were 
different, and see the progress of the British 
advance in each, preparatory to the assault on 
the enemy's second position. In the north our 
task was to capture the three fortified places, 
Ovillers, La Boisselle and Contalmaison, which 
were on a large scale the equivalent of the 
Jortins, manned by machine-guns, which we had 
known to our cost at Festubert and Loos. 
Thiepval on the extreme left was less important, 
for the high ground could be won without its 
capture. The German troops in this area 
obeyed to the full von Below' s instructions and 
fought hard for every inch. On the night of 
Sunday, July 2nd, La Boisselle was penetrated, 

45 







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THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

and all Monday the struggle swayed around that 
village and Ovillers. La Boisselle lies on the 
right of the high road ; Ovillers is to the north 
and a little to the east, separated by a dry 
hollow which we called Mash Valley. All 
Monday night the struggle see-sawed, our troops 
winning ground and the Germans winning back 
small portions. On Tuesday, the 4th, the heat 
wave broke in thunderstorms and torrential 
rain, and the dusty hollows became quagmires. 
That evening La Boisselle was won, after one of 
the bloodiest contests of the war. 

On Wednesday and Thursday, the old enemy 
first line, which we held just south of Thiepval, 
was the subject of a heavy bombardment and 
various counter-attacks. On Friday, July 7th, 
came the first big advance on Contalmaison 
from Sausage Valley on the south-west, and 
from the tangle of copses north-east of Fricourt, 
through which ran the Fricourt-Contalmaison 
high road. On the latter side good work had 
already been done, the enemy jortins at Birch 
Tree Wood and Shelter Copse having been taken 
on July 5th, and the work called the Quadrangle 
on July 6th. On the Friday the attack ranged 
from the Leipzig Redoubt, south of Thiepval, 
and the environs of Ovillers to the skirts of 
Contalmaison. About noon our infantry, after 

48 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

a heavy initial bombardment, carried Contal- 
maison by storm, releasing a small party of 
Tyneside Scottish, who had been made prisoners 
four days earlier. The 3rd Prussian Guard 
Division were our opponents — containing true 
Guards regiments, not like the 2nd Guards 
Reserve Division, which had been against us at 
Serre on July 1st, which was only a division 
used as a reserve to the Guards. They were 
heavily punished, and 700 of them fell as 
prisoners into our hands. But our success at 
Contalmaison was beyond our strength to 
maintain, and in the afternoon a counter-attack 
forced us out of the village. That same day we 
had pushed our front nearly half-a-mile along 
the Bapaume road, east of La Boisselle, and had 
taken most of the Leipzig Redoubt. Ovillers 
was now in danger of envelopment. One 
brigade had attacked in front, and another 
brigade, pressing in on the flank, \Yas cutting the 
position in two. All that day there was a 
deluge of rain, and the sodden ground and 
flooded trenches crippled the movement of our 
men. 

Next day the struggle for Ovillers continued. 
The place was now a mass of battered trenches, 
rubble, and muddy shell-holes, and every yard 
had to be fought for. We were also slowly 

49 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

consolidating our ground around Contalmaison, 
and driving the Germans from their strongholds 
in the little copses. Ever since July 7th we 
had held the southern corner of the village. On 
the night of Monday, the 10th, pushing from 
Bailiff's Wood on the west side in four succes- 
sive waves, with our guns lifting the range in 
front of us, we broke into the north-west corner, 
swept round on the north, and after bitter hand- 
to-hand fighting conquered the whole village. 
As for Ovillers, it was now surrounded and 
beyond succour, and it was only a question of 
days till its stubborn garrison must yield. It 
did not actually fall till Monday, July 17th, when 
the gallant remnant — two officers and 124 
guardsmen — surrendered. By that time our 
main push had swept far to the eastward. 

A good description of the country over which 
we had advanced is contained in a letter of an 
officer to a friend who had been invalided 
home : — 

" I suppose it would seem nothing to other 
people, but you, who were here with us through 
all those dismal winter months, will understand 
how thrilling it was to be able to walk about 
on that ground in broad daylight, smoking one's 
pipe. You remember how our chaps used to 
risk their lives in the early days for such silly sou- 
venirs as nose-caps and that kind of thing. You 

50 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

could gather them by the cartload now, and 
Boche caps and buttons, and bits of uniform 
and boots, and broken rifles and odd tags of 
equipment — cartloads of it. To other folk, 
and on the maps, one place seems just like 
another, I suppose ; but to us — La Boiselle and 
Ovillers — my hat ! To walk about in those hells ! 
Not one of those broken walls we knew so well 
(through our glasses) is standing now ; and only a 
few jagged spikes where the trees were. I went 
along the ' sunken road ' all the way to Contal- 
maison. Talk about sacred ground. When I 
think what that no-man's-land was to us for 
nearly a year ! The new troops coming up now 
go barging across it in the most light-hearted 
way. They know nothing about it. It means 
no more to them than the roads behind used to 
mean to us. It's all behind, to them, and never 
was the front. But when I think how we watered 
every yard of it with blood and sweat ! Children 
might play there now, if it didn't look so much 
like the aftermath of an earthquake. But you 
know there's a kind of a wrench about seeing 
the new chaps swagger over it so carelessly, and 
seeing it gradually merged into the ' behind 
the line ' country. I have a sort of feeling it 
ought to be marked off somehow, a permanent 
memorial. 

" You remember that old couple who had the 

blacksmith's shop at . The wife was down 

at the corner by the other night, when I 

came along with half the platoon. I found her 
wringing the hands of some of our stolid chaps, 

51 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

and couldn't make it out. Then she told me, 
half sobbing, how she and her husband owned a 
couple of fields just beyond our old front line, and 
how she wanted to thank us for getting them 
back. Think what those fields must have been 
in the spring of 1914, and what they are to-day, 
every yard of them torn by shells,burrowed through 
and through by old trenches and dug-outs ; think 
of the hundreds of tons of wire, sand-bags, 
timber, galvanized iron, duck-boards, revetting 
stuff, steel, iron, blood and sweat, the rum jars, 
bully beef tins, old trench boots, field dressings, 
cartridge cases, rockets, wire stanchions and 
stakes, gas gongs, bomb boxes, S.A.A. cases, 
broken canteens, bits of uniforms, and buried 
soldiers, and Boches — all in the old lady's two 
little fields. Think how she must have felt, after 
two years, to know we'd got them back. She's 
walked over them by now, I daresay." 



THE STRUGGLE FOR THE WOODS, 

To turn to the southern sector, where the 
problem was to clear out the fortified woods 
which intervened between us and the German 
second line. From the crest of the first ridge 
above Fricourt and Montauban one looks into 
a shallow trough, called Caterpillar Valley, 
beyond which the ground rises to the Bazentin- 
Longueval ridge. On the left, toward Contal- 
maisoHj is the big Mametz Wood ; to the right, 

52 



THE BATTLE OF TEE SOMME, 

beyond Montauban, the pear-shaped woods of 
Bernafay and Tr6nes. 

On Monday, the 3rd, the ground east of 
Fricourt Wood was cleared, and the approaches 
to Mametz Wood won. That day a German 
counter-attack developed. A fresh division ap- 
peared at Montauban, which was faithfully 
handled by our guns. The " milking of the 
line " had begun, for a battalion from the 
Champagne front appeared east of Mametz early 
on Monday morning. Within a very short time 
of detraining at railhead the whole battalion 
had been destroyed or made prisoners. In one 
small area over 1,000 men were taken. A 
wounded officer of a Highland regiment has 
described the scene : — 

" It was the finest show I ever saw in my life. 
There were six hundred Boches of all ranks march- 
ing in column of route across the open back 
towards our rear. They were disarmed, of 
course. And what do you think they had for 
escort ? Three ragged Jocks of our battalion, 
all blood and dirt and rags, with their rifles at the 
slope, doing a sort of G.O.C.'s inspection parade 
march, like pipers at the head of a battalion. That 
was good enough for me. I brought up the rear, 
and that's how I got to a dressing-station and had 
my arm dressed. I walked behind a six hundred 
strong column of Boches, but I couldn't equal the 
swagger of those three Jocks in the lead." 

53 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

Next day, Tuesday, July 4th, we were well 
established in the Wood of Mametz, 3,000 yards 
north of Mametz village, and by midday had 
taken the Wood of Bernafay. These inter- 
mediate positions were not acquired without a 
grim struggle. The woods were thick with 
undergrowth which had not been cut for two 
seasons, and though our artillery played havoc 
with the trees it could not clear away the 
tangled shrubbery beneath them. The Germans 
had filled the place with machine-gun redoubts, 
connected by concealed trenches, and in some 
cases they had machine-guns in positions in the 
trees. Each step in our advance had to be 
fought for, and in that briery labyrinth the 
battle tended always to become a series of indi- 
vidual combats. Every position we won was 
subjected at once to a heavy counter-bombard- 
ment. During the first two days of July it was 
possible to move in moderate safety almost up to 
the British firing-lines, but from the 4th onward 
the enemy kept up a steady bombardment of 
our whole new front, and barraged heavily in 
all the hinterland around Fricourt, Mametz and 
Montauban. 

On Saturday, July 8th, we made our first 
lodgment in the Wood of Trones, assisted by 
the flanking fire of the French guns. We took 

54 






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THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

130 prisoners, and broke up the German counter- 
attacks. For the next five days that wood was 
the hottest corner in the southern British sector. 
Slowly and stubbornly we pushed our way 
northwards from our point of lodgment 
in the southern end. Six counter-attacks 
were launched against us on Sunday night 
and Monday, and on Monday afternoon the 
sixth succeeded in winning back some of the 
wood. These desperate efforts exactly suited 
our purpose, for the German losses under our 
artillery fire were enormous. The fighting was 
continued on Tuesday, when we recaptured the 
whole of the wood except the extreme northern 
corner. That same day we approached the 
north end of Mametz Wood and took a " dump " 
of German stores. The difficulty of the fighting 
and the strength of the defence may be realised 
from the fact that the taking of a few hundred 
yards or so of woodland meant invariably the 
capture of several hundred prisoners. 
' By Wednesday evening, July 12th, we had 
taken the whole of Mametz Wood. Its 200 odd 
acres, interlaced with barbed wire, honeycombed 
with trenches, and bristling with machine-guns, 
had given us a tough struggle, especially the 
last strip on the north side, where the German 
minenwerjers were thick, and their machine-gun 

55 £ 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

positions enfiladed every advance. At 4 o'clock 
in the afternoon we broke out of the wood, and 
were face to face at last with the main German 
second position. Meantime, the Wood of Trones 
had become a Tom Tiddler's Ground, which 
neither antagonist could fully claim or use as a 
base. It was at the mercy of the artillery fire 
of both sides, and it was impossible in the time 
to construct shell-proof defences. 

In the French section the advance had been 
swift and continuous. At the beginning of the 
battle they had been faced with 27 German 
battalions, principally of the 17th Corps. The 
attack, as we have seen, was a complete surprise, 
for half-an-hour before it began on July 1st, an 
order was issued to the German troops, 
predicting the imminent fall of Verdun, 
and announcing that a French offensive 
elsewhere had thereby been prevented. On 
the nine-mile front from Maricourt to Estrees 
the German first position had been carried 
the first day. The heavy guns, when 
they had sufficiently pounded it, ceased 
their fire ; then the " 75's " took up the tale 
and plastered the front and communication 
trenches with shrapnel ; then a skirmishing line 
advanced to report the damage done ; and 
finally the infantry moved forward to an easy 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

occupation. It had been the German method 
at Verdun ; but it was practised by the French 
with far greater precision, and with far better 
fighting material. On Monday, July 8rd, they 
were into the German second position south of 
the Somme. By the next day they had taken 
Belloy-en-Santerre, a point in the third line. On 
Wednesday they had the better part of Estrees 
and were within three miles of Peronne. Counter- 
attacks by the 17th Bavarian Division achieved 
nothing, and the German rail-head was moved 
from Peronne to Chaulnes. On the night of 
Sunday, July 9th, they took Biaches, a mile from 
Peronne, and held a front from there to Barleux 
— a position beyond the German third line. 
There was now nothing in front of them in this 
section except the line of the Upper Somme. 
This was south of the river. North of it they 
had attained points in the second line, but had 
not yet carried it wholly from Hem northwards. 
The next step was for the British to attack 
the enemy second position before them. It 
ran, as we have seen, from Pozieres through the 
Bazentins and Longueval to Guillemont. On 
Thursday, July 13th, we were in a condition 
to begin the next stage of our advance. The 
capture of Contalmaison had been the indispens- 
able preliminary, and immediately following 

57 £2 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

its fall Sir Douglas Haig issued his first summary. 
" After ten days and nights of continuous 
fighting, our troops have completed the 
methodical capture of the whole of the enemy's 
first system of defence on a front of 14,000 
yards. This system of defence consisted of 
numerous and continuous lines of fire trenches, 
extending to various depths of from 2,000 to 
4,000 yards, and included five strongly fortified 
villages, numerous heavily wired and entrenched 
woods, and a large number of immensely strong 
redoubts. The capture of each of these trenches 
represented an operation of some importance, 
and the whole of them are now in our hands." 
The summary did not err from over-statement. 
If the northern part of our front, from Thiepval 
to Gommecourt, had not succeeded, the southern 
part had steadily bitten its way like a deadly 
acid into as strong a position as any terrain of 
the campaign could show. We had already 
attracted against us the bulk of the available 
German reserves, and had largely destroyed 
them. The strength of our plan lay in its 
deliberateness, and the mathematical sequence 
of its stages. 



58 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

CHAPTER III. 
THE SECOND STAGE. 

At dawn on Friday, the 14th, began the second 
stage of the battle. 

The most methodical action has its gambling 
element, its moments when a risk must be 
boldly taken. Without such hazards there can 
be no chance of surprise. The British attack 
of July 14th had much of this calculated 
audacity. In certain parts — as at Contalmaison 
Villa and Mametz Wood — we held positions 
within a few hundred yards of the enemy's line. 
But in the section from Bazentin-le- Grand to 
Longueval there was a long advance before us 
up the slopes north of Caterpillar Valley, On 
the extreme right the Wood of Trones gave us a 
somewhat indifferent place of assembly. 

The difficulties before the British attack were 
so great that more than one distinguished French 
officer doubted its possibility. One British 
General, in conversation with a French colleague, 
undertook, if the thing did not succeed, to eat 
his hat. When about noon on the 14th the 
French General heard what had happened, he 
is reported to have observed : " C'est bien ! le 

59 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

General X ne mange pas son chapeau ! " It 
was a pleasant reflection for the British troops 
that they had surprised their Allies ; France 
had so often during the campaign exceeded the 
wildest expectations of her friends. 

The day of the attack was of fortunate omen, 
for the 14th of July was the anniversary of the 
fall of the Bastille, the fete-day of France. In 
Paris there was such a parade as that city had 
not seen in its long history — a procession of 
Allied troops, Belgians, Russians, British infan- 
try, and last of all, the blue-coated heroes of 
France's incomparable line. It was a shining 
proof to the world of the unity of the Alliance. 
And on the same day, while the Paris crowd was 
cheering the Scottish pipers as they swung down 
the boulevards, the British troops in Picardy 
were breaking through the German line, crying 
Vive la France! in all varieties of accent. It was 
France's Day in the eyes of every soldier, the 
sacred day of that people whom in farm and 
village and trench they had come to reverence 
and love. 

The front chosen for attack was from a point 
south-east of Pozieres to Longueval and Del- 
ville Wood, a space of some four miles. Inci- 
dentally, it was necessary for our right flank to 
clear out the Wood of Trdnes. Each village in 

60 



THE BATTLE OF THE S0M3IE. 

the second line had its adjacent or enfolding 
wood— Bazentin-le-Petit, Bazentin-le-Grand, and 
at Longueval the big wood of Delville. In 
the centre, a mile and more beyond the Ger- 
man position, the wood of Foureaux, which we 
called High Wood, hung like a dark cloud on the 
sky line. 

It was only the day before that we had con- 
solidated our new line, and the work required 
to prepare for the attack was colossal. The 
Germans did not believe in an immediate assault, 
and when the bombardment began they thought 
it was no more than one of the spasmodic 
" preparations " with which we had already 
cloaked our purpose. In the small hours of 
the morning our guns opened and continued in 
a crescendo till 3.20 a.m., when the final hurri- 
cane fell. An observer has described the spec- 
tacle : — 

" It was a thick night, the sky veiled in clouds, 
mottled and hurrying clouds, through which 
only one planet shone serene and steadily high up 
in the eastern sky. But the wonderful and appall- 
ing thing was the belt of flame which fringed a 
great arc of the horizon before us. It was not, 
of course, a steady flame, but it was one which 
never went out, rising and falling, flashing and 
flickering, half dimmed with its own smoke, 
against which the stabs and jets of fire from 

61 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

the bursting shells flared out intensely white or 
dully orange. Out of it all, now here, now there, 
rose like fountains the great balls of star shells 
and signal lights — theirs or ours — white and 
crimson and green. The noise of the shells was 
terrific, and when the guns near us spoke, not 
only the air but the earth beneath us shook. All 
the while, too, overhead, amid all the clamour 
and shock, in the darkness and no less as night 
paled to day, the larks sang. Only now and 
again would the song be audible, but whenever 
there was an interval between the roaring of the 
nearer guns, above all the distant tumult, it 
came down clear and very beautiful by contrast, 
Nor was the lark the only bird that was awake, 
for close by us, somewhere in the dark, a quail kept 
constantly urging us — or the guns — to be Quick- 
be-quick." 

THE CAPTURE OF THE GERMAN SECOND 

POSITION, 

Just before 3.30 a.m., when the cloudy 
dawn had fully come, the infantry attacked. 
In some places they had had to cover a long 
distance before reaching their striking-point. 
So complete was the surprise that, in the dark 
the battalions which had the furthest road 
to go came within 200 yards of the enemy's 
wire with scarcely a casualty. When the German 
barrage came it fell behind them. There were 
three sections of the main attack — the division 

62 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

which had taken Mametz, against Bazentin-le- 
Petit ; a famous regular division, which had 
fought in the Peninsula, against Bazentin-le- 
Grand ; and a Scottish new division, against 
Longueval village and Delville Wood. In the 
last division was a brigade of South African 
troops who had been in the Damaraland Cam- 
paign. 

The attack failed nowhere. In some parts it 
was slower than others — where the enemy's 
defence had been less comprehensively destroyed, 
but by the afternoon all our tasks had been 
accomplished. To take one instance. Two of 
the attacking brigades were each composed of 
two battalions of the New Army and two of 
the old Regulars. The general commanding put 
the four new battalions into the first line. 
The experiment proved the worth of the new 
troops, for a little after midday their work was 
done, their part of the German second line was 
taken, and 662 unwounded men, 36 officers 
(including a battalion commander), 4 howitzers, 
4 field-guns, and 14 machine-guns were in 
their hands. By the evening we had the whole 
second line from Bazentin-le- Petit to Longueval, 
and in the twenty-four hours' battle we took 
over 2,000 prisoners, many of them of the 
3rd Division of the German Guards. The 

63 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

audacious enterprise had been crowned with an 
unparalleled success. 

The Wood of Trdnes on our right flank was 
cleared, and in that place occurred one of the 
most romantic incidents of the action. On 
Thursday night an attack had been delivered 
there, and 100 men of the Royal West Kents 
became separated from their battalion. They 
had machine-guns with them and sufficient 
ammunition, so they were able to fortify one 
or two posts which they maintained all night 
against tremendous odds. Next morning the 
British sweep retrieved them, and the position 
they had maintained gave our troops invaluable 
aid in the clearing of the wood. All through 
this Battle of the Somme there were similar 
incidents ; an advance would go too far and 
the point would be cut off, but that point 
would succeed in maintaining itself till a fresh 
advance reclaimed it. A better proof of discipline 
and resolution could not be desired. 

On Saturday, July 15th, we were busy 
consolidating the ground won, and at some 
points pushing further. Our aircraft, in spite 
of the haze, were never idle, and in twenty-four 
hours they destroyed four Fokkers, three 
biplanes, and a double-engined plane, without 
the loss of a single machine. On the left we 

64 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

fought our way to the skirts of Pozieres. We 
took the whole of Bazentin-le-Petit Wood and 
beat off two counter-attacks. In the centre, 
north of Bazentin-le- Grand, we pushed as far 
as High Wood, and broke into the German 
third Hne. It was late in the afternoon when the 
advance was made, the first in eighteen months 
which had seen the use of cavalry. In the 
Champagne battle of September 25th the 
French had used some squadrons of General 
Baratier's Colonial Horse in the ground between 
the first and second German lines to sweep up 
prisoners and capture guns. This tactical ex- 
pedient was now followed by the British, 
with the difference that in Champagne the 
fortified second line had not been taken, while 
in Picardy we were through all the main fortifi- 
cations and operating against an improvised 
position. The cavalry used were a troop of the 
Dragoon Guards and a troop of Deccan Horse. 
They made their way up the shallow valley 
beyond Bazentin-le- Grand, finding cover in the 
slope of the ground and the growing corn. 
The final advance was made partly on foot and 
partly on horseback, and the enemy in the 
corn were ridden down, captured, or slain with 
lance and sabre. The cavalry then set to work 
to entrench themselves, to protect the flank of 

65 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

the advancing infantry in High Wood. It was 
a clean and workmanhke job, and the news of 
it exhilarated the whole line. That cavalry- 
should be used at all seemed to forecast the end 
of the long trench fighting and the beginning of 
a campaign in the open. 

On the right, around Longueval and in 
Delville Wood, there was the fiercest struggle 
of all. By the Saturday evening the whole 
wood had been taken, but the enemy was still 
in possession of certain orchards on the high 
ground to the north of the village, on the road 
to Flers. The position was well suited for 
counter-attacks, and was much at the mercy 
of the enemy's guns. For four days the South 
African Brigade and the Scots wrestled in the 
wood, desperate hand-to-hand fighting such as 
the American armies knew in the last Wilderness 
campaign. Their assault had been splendid, but 
their defence was a far greater exploit. They 
hung on with little food and water, exposed to 
an incessant bombardment, and, when their 
ranks were terribly depleted, they flung back 
an attack by three Brandenburg regiments. 
In this far-flung battle all parts of the Empire 
won fame, and not least was the glory of the 
South African contingent. 

In this stage of the action we tried con- 

66 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

elusions with two of the most celebrated of 
the German formations. For some days we had 
engaged the 3rd Guards Division — ^that division 
which in April had been brought from the 
Russian front, and had been hailed by the 
Kaiser as the hope of his throne and empire. 
It contained three regiments — the Guards Fusi- 
liers, the Lehr Regiment, and the 9th Grenadiers 
— and every one had been heavily depleted. Some 
of them showed fine fighting quality, such as 
the garrison at Ovillers, but they met some- 
thing more than their match in our New Army. 
In the attack on the second position the 5th 
Brandenburg Division appeared, that division 
which had attacked at Douaumont on February 
25th and at Vaux on March 9th. Now it was 
virtually a new formation, for at Verdun it had 
lost well over 100 per cent, of its original 
strength. It was scarcely more fortunate 
at Longueval. " The enemy," said the Kaiser, 
in his address on April 20th, " has prepared 
his own soup, and now he must sup it, and I 
look to you to see to it. May the appearance 
of the 3rd Guards Division inform him what 
soldiers are facing him." The information had 
been conveyed to us, and our men were by no 
means depressed. They desired to meet with 
the best that Germany could produce, for they 

67 



TEE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

were confident that they could put that best 
out of action. 

On Sunday, the 16th, we withdrew our ad- 
vanced posts from High Wood. They had done 
their work, and formed a screen behind which 
we had consoHdated our Hne. On Monday 
Ovillers was at last completely taken after 
a stout defence, and the way was prepared for a 
general assault on Pozieres. That day, too, on 
our right we widened the gap in the German 
front by the capture of Waterlot Farm, half-way 
between Longueval and Guillemont, The 
weather had again broken, and drenching rain 
and low mists made progress difficult. The 
enemy had got up many new batteries, whose 
position could not be detected in such weather 
by our aircraft. He himself was better off, since 
we were fighting on ground he had once held, and 
he had the register of our trench lines and most 
of our possible gun positions. 

The total of unwounded prisoners in British 
hands was now 189 officers and 10,779 men. The 
armament taken included five 8 in. and three 6 in. 
howitzers, four 6 in. guns, five other heavies, 
37 field guns, 30 trench mortars and 66 machine- 
guns. Of the German losses in dead and 
wounded no exact estimate is possible, but they 
were beyond doubt very great, and their abor- 

68 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

tive counter-attacks had probably brought up 
the total of the defence to a figure as high as 
that of the attack. Captured letters all told 
the same tale. Instant relief was begged for ; 
one battalion consisted of three officers, two 
N.C.O.'s, and nineteen men ; another was so 
exhausted that it could no longer be employed 
in fighting ; another had completely lost its fight- 
ing spirit. 

No British soldier decried the quality of 
his opponents. At the most he declared that 
it was " patchy," which was the truth. " The 
way some of 'em talk," said a young officer, 
" you might think the Boches were all baby- 
killers, frightened of their own shadows, and 
anxious only to be taken prisoners. Weil, 
of course, I know there are some like that, a 
good many in fact, and in all the British Army 
I don't believe there's one. Anyhow, I've 
never seen or heard of a British soldier running 
out with hands up, calling for mercy and giving 
himself up. Never heard of it, and I saw 
Boches doing it, saw a Boche officer doing it. 
But mind you, the fellows we ran up against 
fought like tigers. I say they were good soldiers, 
and brave men. We were between Fricourt and 
Mametz, and when we had the Boche with his 
back to the wall he fought like a tiger-cat: 

G9 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

No Kamarade business about that. They were 
shying bombs in our faces at point-blank range 
when our bayonets were absolutely touching 
'em." 

There were extraordinarily gallant elements 
in the German ranks, but they were watered 
down with much indifferent stuff. Many 
had lost heart for the fight ; they had been 
told so often of victory assured that they ended 
by disbelieving everything. On one occasion a 
hundred men put up their hands while actually 
charging. Distressful letters from their homes, a 
lack of confidence in their officers and enthusiasm 
for their cause, and the suspicion which comes 
from a foolish censoring of all truth, had im- 
paired the fibre of men who in normal circum- 
stances would have fought stoutly. The German 
machine was still formidable, but its motive 
power was weakening. 

As for the Allies every day that passed 
nerved and steeled them. The French had 
made the final resolution and the ultimate 
sacrifice. There was no alternative but 
victory, and the whole race was ready to 
perish on the battlefield sooner than accept a 
German domination. Of the same quality was 
the British temper. " Most of these men," said 
a chaplain, " never handled a gun till they joined 

70 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

up. Yet they have faced bigger things than any 
veteran ever faced before, and faced them 
steadily, seeing it all very clearly and fearing it 
not one scrap ; though they have again and 
again forced mad fear into the highly trained 
troops facing them. That is because they have 
something that you cannot make in foundries, 
that you cannot even give by training. I 
could give it a name the Church would recognise. 
Let's say they know their cause is good, as they 
very surely do. The Germans may write on 
their badges that God is with them, but our lads 
— ^they know." 

POZIERES AND GUILLEMONT. 

The next step was to round off our capture of 
the enemy second position, and consolidate our 
ground, for it was very certain that the Germans 
would not be content to leave us in quiet posses- 
sion. The second line being lost from east of 
Pozi^res to Delville Wood, the enemy was com- 
pelled to make a switch line to connect his third 
position with an uncaptured point in his second, 
such as Pozieres. Fighting continued in the skirts 
of Delville Wood, and among the orchards of 
Longueval, which had to be taken one by one. 
Apart from this general activity, our two main 

71 F 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

objectives were Pozieres and Guillemont. The 
first, with the Windmill beyond it, repre- 
sented the highest ground of the Thiepval 
plateau ; the second was necessary to us before 
we could align our next advance with that of 
the French. Our aim was the crest of the ridge, 
the watershed, which would give us direct 
observation over all the rolling country to the 
east. The vital points on this watershed were 
Mouquet Farm, between Thiepval and Pozieres ; 
the Windmill, now only a stone pedestal, on the 
high road east of Pozieres ; High Wood, and the 
high ground direct east of Longueval. 

The weather did not favour us. The third 
week of July was rain and fog. The last week 
and the first fortnight of August saw blazing 
summer weather, which in that arid and dusty 
land told severely on men wearing heavy steel 
helmets and carrying a load of equipment. There 
was little wind, and a heat-haze lay low on the 
uplands. This meant poor visibility at a time when 
air reconnaissance was most vital. Hence the task 
of counter-bombardment grew very difficult, and 
the steps in our progress became for the moment 
slow and irregular. A battle which advances with- 
out a hitch exists only in a Staff college kriegspiel, 
and the wise general, in preparing his plans, 
makes ample allowance for delays. 

72 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

On July 19th there was an attempt on Guille- 
mont from Trones Wood v/hich failed to progress. 
On the 20th the French made fine progress, 
pushing their front east of Hardecourt beyond 
the Combles-Clery light railway, and south of 
the Somme widening the gap by carrying the 
whole German defence system from Barleux to 
Vermandovillers. For the next two days our 
guns bombarded the whole enemy front, and on 
the Sunday, July 23rd, came the next great 
infantry attack. 

That attack had a wide front, but its main 
fury was on the left, where Pozieres and its 
Windmill crowned the slope up which ran the 
Albert-Bapaume road. The village had long 
ere this been pounded flat, the Windmill was a 
stump, and the trees in the gardens matchwood, 
but every yard of those devastated acres was 
fortified in the German fashion with covered 
trenches, deep dug-outs and machine-gun em- 
placements. 

The assault was delivered from two sides — ^the 
Midland Territorials moving from the south- 
west in the ground between Pozieres and Ovil- 
lers, and an Australian division from the south- 
east, advancing from the direction of Contal- 
maison Villa. The movement began about 
midnight, and the Midlanders speedily cleared 

73 f2 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

out the defences which the Germans had flung 
out south of the village to the left of the highroad, 
and held a line along the outskirts of the place 
in the direction of Thiepval. The Australians 
had a difficult task — for they had first to take a 
sunken road parallel with the highway, then a 
formidable line of trenches, and finally the 
high road itself which runs straight through the 
middle of the village. 

The Australian Corps was second to none in 
the new British Army. In the famous landing 
at Gallipoli and in a dozen desperate fights, 
culminating in the great battle which began on 
August 6th, 1915, they had shown themselves in- 
comparable in the fire of assault and in reckless 
personal valour. In the grim struggle now 
beginning they had to face a far heavier fire and 
far more formidable defences than anything 
that Gallipoli could show. For their task not 
gallantry only but perfect discipline and perfect 
coolness were needed. The splendid troops 
were equal to the call. They won the high road 
after desperate fighting in the ruined houses, 
and established a line where the breadth of the 
road alone separated them from the enemy. 
A famous division of British regulars on their 
flank sent them a message to say that they were 
proud to fight by their side. 

74 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

When all were gallant it is hard to select 
special incidents, but in their record of personal 
bravery the Australians in the West rivalled 
their famous attack on the Lone Pine position 
in Gallipoli. The list of Victoria Crosses awarded 
is sufficient proof. Second-Lieutenant Black- 
burn led four parties of bombers against a 
German stronghold and took 250 yards of 
trench. He then crawled forward with a 
sergeant to reconnoitre, and, returning, led his 
men to a capture of a further 120 yards. Private 
Thomas Cooke, a machine-gunner, went on 
firing when he was the only man left and was 
found dead beside his gun. Private William 
Jackson brought in wounded men from no- 
man's-land till his arm was blown off by a shell, 
and then, after obtaining assistance, went out 
again to find two wounded comrades. Private 
Martin O'Meara for four days brought in 
wounded under heavy fire, and carried ammuni- 
tion to a vital point through an incessant 
barrage. Private John Leak was one of a 
party which captured a German stronghold. 
At one moment, when the enemy's bombs were 
outranging ours, he leaped from the trench, 
ran forward under close-range machine-gun 
fire, and bombed the enemy's post. He then 
jumped into the post and bayonetted three 

75 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

German bombers. Later, when the party was 
driven back by overwhelming numbers, he was 
at every stage the last to withdraw. " His 
courage was amazing," says the official report, 
"and had such an effect on the enemy th^t, on the 
arrival of reinforcements, the whole trench was 
recaptured." 

On Monday and Tuesday the battle continued, 
and by the evening of the latter day most of 
Pozieres was in our hands. By Wednesday 
morning, July 26th, the whole village was ours, 
and the Territorials on the left were pushing 
northward and had taken two lines of trenches. 
The two divisions joined hands at the north 
corner, where they occupied the cemetery, and 
held a portion of the switch line. Here they 
lived under a perpetual enemy bombardment. 
The Germans still held the Windmill, which was 
the higher ground and gave them a good obser- 
vation point. The sight of that ridge from the 
road east of Ovillers was one that no man who 
saw it was likely to forget. It seemed to be 
smothered monotonously in smoke and fire. 
Wafts of the thick heliotrope smell of the 
lachrymatory shells floated down from it. Out 
of the dust and glare would come Australian 
units which had been relieved, long lean men 
with the shadows of a great fatigue around their 

76 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

deep-set far-sighted eyes. They were perfectly 
cheerful and composed, and no Lowland Scot 
was ever less inclined to expansive speech. At 
the most they would admit in their slow quiet 
voices that what they had been through had been 
" some battle." 

An observer with the Australians has de- 
scribed the unceasing bombardment : — 

" Hour after hour, day and night, with in- 
creasing intensity as the time went on, the enemy 
rained heavy shell into the area. Now he would 
send them crashing in on a line south of the 
road — eight heavy shells at a time, minute after 
minute, followed by a burst of shrapnel. Now he 
would place a curtain straight across this valley 
or that till the sky and landscape were blotted 
out, except for fleeting glimpses seen as through 
a lift of fog. . . . Day and night the men 
worked through it, fighting the horrid machinery 
far over the horizon as if they were fighting 
Germans hand to hand ; building up whatever 
it battered down ; buried some of them, not once, 
but again and again and again. What is a 
barrage against such troops ? They went through 
it as you would go through a summer shower, too 
proud to bend their heads, many of them, because 
their mates were looking. I am telling you of 
things I have seen. As one of the best of their 
officers said to me : 'I have to walk about as if I 
liked it ; what else can you do when your own 
men teach you to ? ' " 

77 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

Meantime there had been heavy fighting 
around Longueval and in Delville Wood. On 
Thursday, the 27th, the wood was finally cleared 
of the enemy, and next day the last enemy 
outpost in Longueval village was captured. 
In this action we accounted for the remains of 
the Brandenburgers, taking prisoner three offi- 
cers and one hundred and fifty-eight men. The 
British had not met them since that day on the 
Aisne, when they had been forced back by our 
1st Division behind the edge of the plateau. 

Early on the morning of Saturday, the 29th, 
the Australians attacked at Pozieres towards 
the Windmill, and after a fierce hand-to-hand 
struggle in the darkness advanced their front 
to the edge of the trench labyrinth which con- 
stituted that position. Next morning, we at- 
tacked Guillemont from the north-west and west, 
while the French pushed almost to the edge of 
Maurepas. Our farthest limit was the station 
on the light railway just outside Guillemont 
village. 

Little happened for some days. The heat 
was now very great, so great that even men 
inured to an Australian summer found it hard 
to bear, and the maddening haze still muffled 
the landscape. The French were meantime 
fighting their way through the remnants of the 

78 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

German second position north of the Somme 
between Hem Wood and Monacu Farm. There 
were strong counter-attacks against Delville 
Wood, which were beaten off by our guns before 
they got to close range. Daily we bombarded 
points in the enemy hinterland and did much 
destruction among their depots and billets 
and heavy batteries. And then on the night 
of Friday, August 4th, came the final attack at 
Pozieres. 

We had already won the German second 
position up to the top of the village, where the 
new switch line joined on. The attack was in 
the nature of a surprise. It began at nine in 
the evening, when the light was still strong. 
The Australians attacked on the right at the 
Windmill, and troops from South England on 
the left. The trenches, which had been almost 
obliterated by our guns, were carried at a rush, 
and before the darkness came we had taken the 
rest of the second position on a front of 2,000 
yards. Counter-attacks followed all through 
the night, but they were badly co-ordinated and 
achieved nothing. On Saturday we had pushed 
our line north and west of the village from 400 
to 600 yards on a front of 3,000. Early on 
Sunday morning the Germans counter-attacked 
with liquid fire and gained a small portion of the 

79 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

trench line, which was speedily recovered. The 
position was now that we held the much con- 
tested Windmill, and that we extended on the 
east of the village to the west end of the Switch, 
while west of Pozieres we had pushed so far 
north that the German line was drooping like 
the eaves of a steep roof. We had taken some 
600 prisoners, and at last we were looking over 
the watershed. 

The following week saw repeated attempts by 
the enemy to recover his losses. The German 
bombardment was incessant and intense, and 
on the high bare scarp around the Windmil 
our troops had to make heavy drafts on their 
fortitude. On Tuesday, August 8th, the British 
right closed farther in on Guillemont. At 
Pozieres, too, every day our lines advanced, 
especially in the angle toward Mouquet Farm, 
between the village and Thiepval. We were 
exposed to a flanking fire from Thiepval, and 
to the exactly ranged heavy batteries around 
Courcelette and Grandcourt. Our task was to 
break off and take heavy toll of the many 
German counter-attacks and on the rebound 
to win, yard by yard, ground which made our 
position secure. 

In the desperate strain of this fighting there 
was evidence that the superb German machine 

so 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

was beginning to creak and falter. Hitherto, 
its strength had lain in the automatic precision 
of its ordering. Now, since reserves had to be 
hastily collected from all quarters, there was some 
fumbling in the direction. Attacks made by half 
a dozen battalions collected from three divisions, 
battalions which had never before been brigaded 
together, were bound to lack the old vigour and 
cohesion. Units lost direction, staff-work was 
imperfect, and what should have been a hammer- 
blow became a loose scrimmage. A captured 
letter written by an officer of the German 19th 
Corps revealed a change from the perfect co- 
ordination of the first year of war. " The job 
of relieving yesterday was incredible. From 
Courcelette we relieved across the open. Our 
position, of course, was quite different to what 
we had been told. Our company alone relieved a 
full battalion though we were only told to relieve 
a company of fifty men weakened through 
casualties. Those w^e relieved had no idea 
where the enemy was, how far off he was, or if 
any of our own troops were in front of us. We 
got no idea of our supposed position till 6 o'clock 
this evening. The English were 400 metres 
away, the Windmill just over the hill. We 
shall have to look to it to-night not to get taken 
prisoners. We have no dug-outs ; we dig a 

81 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

hole in the side of a shell-hole and lie and get 
rheumatism. We get nothing to eat and drink. 
Yesterday each man drew two bottles of water 
and three iron rations, and these must last till 
we are relieved. The ceaseless roar of the guns 
is driving us mad, and many of the men are 
knocked up." Much of this discomfort was, to 
be sure, the fate of any troops in an advanced 
position, but there seemed to be an uncertainty 
as to purpose and a confusion in staff -work from 
which the Allies were now free. 

It w^as the fashion in the German Press, at 
this time, to compare the Picardy offensive of 
the Allies with the German attack on Verdun, 
very much to the advantage of the latter. The 
deduction was false. In every military aspect 
— in the extent of ground won, in the respective 
losses, in the accuracy and weight of artillery, 
in the quality of the infantry attacks, and in the 
precision of the generalship — the Verdun attack 
fell far short of the Picardy battle. The Verdun 
front, in its operative part, had been narrower 
than that of the Somme, but at least ten more 
enemy divisions had by the beginning of August 
been attracted to Picardy than had appeared 
between Avocourt and Vaux up to the end of 
April. The Crown Prince at Verdun speedily 
lost the initiative in any serious sense ; on the 

82 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

Somme von Below never possessed it. There 
the enemy had to accept battle as the Allied will 
imposed it, and no counter-attack could for a 
moment divert the resolute Allied purpose. 

We have spoken of the stamina of the British 
troops, which was never tried more hardly than 
in the close-quarters fighting in the ruined 
villages and desolated woods of the German 
second position. No small part of it was due 
to the quality of the officers. When our great 
armies were improvised, the current fear was 
that a sufficient number of trained officers could 
not be provided to lead them. But the fear 
was groundless. The typical public-school boy 
proved a born leader of men. His good-humour 
and camaraderie, his high sense of duty, his 
personal gallantry were the qualities most needed 
in the long months of trench warfare. When 
the advance came he was equal to the occasion. 
Much of the fighting was in small units, and the 
dash and intrepidity of men who a little before 
had been schoolboys was a notable asset in this 
struggle of sheer human quality. The younger 
officers sacrificed themselves freely, and it was 
the names of platoon commanders that filled 
most of the casualty lists. 

Men fell who promised to win the highest 
distinction in civilian life. Many died, who 

83 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

were of the stuff from which the future leaders 
of the British Army would have been drawn. 
Such, to name one conspicuous instance, was 
Major William Congreve, who fell at Delville 
Wood at the age of twenty-five, having in two 
years of war already proved that he possessed 
the mind and character of a great soldier.* It 
was a heavy price we paid, but who shall say 
that it was not well paid — not only in military 
results, but in the proof to our country and to the 
world that our officers were worthy of our men, 
and that they realised to the full the pride and 
duty of leadership ? In an address given in 
the spring to a school for young officers, one of 
the most brilliant — and one of the youngest— 
of British generals told his hearers : " Remember 
that, though we are officers and the men are 
privates, still we are all comrades in the great 
dangers and the great struggle ; make the men 
feel that you realise this comradeship and love it 
... Do not overlook the fact that the British 
soldier has a great soul, and can appreciate 
what courage, honour, patriotism and self- 
sacrifice mean." That lesson had been well and 
truly learned, and the result was " one equal 



* He had won the D.S,0., the Mihtaiy Cross and the Cross 
of the Legion of Honour, and had been recommended for the 
Victoria Cross. 



THE BATTLE OF TEE SOMME. 

temper of heroic minds " in all ranks of the 
British Army. 

The list of Victoria Crosses can never be an 
adequate record of gallantry ; it is no more than 
a sample of what in less conspicuous form was 
found everywhere in the battle. But in that 
short list there are exploits of courage and 
sacrifice which have never been surpassed. 
Major Loudoun-Shand, of the Yorkshires, fell 
mortally wounded while leading his men over 
the parapets, but he insisted on being propped 
up in a trench and encouraged his battalion 
till he died. Lieutenant Gather, of the Royal 
Irish Fusiliers, died while bringmg in wounded 
from no-man's-land and carrying water to those 
who could not be moved, in full view and 
under the direct fire of the enemy. Second- 
Lieutenant Simpson Bell, of the Yorkshires, 
found his company enfiladed, during an attack, 
by a German machine-gun. Of his own initiative 
he crept with a corporal and a private up a 
communication trench, crossed the open, and 
destroyed the machine-gun and its gunners, 
thereby saving many lives and ensuring the 
success of the British movement. A similar 
exploit was that of Company-Sergeant-Major 
Carter, of the Royal Sussex, who fell in the 
attempt. Corporal Sanders, of the West York- 

85 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

shires, found himself cut off in the enemy line 
with a party of thirty men. For two days 
he held the post, without food or water, and 
beat off German attacks, till relief came and 
he brought back his remnant of nineteen to 
our lines. Private Miller, of the Royal Lan- 
cashires, was sent through a heavy barrage 
with a message to which a reply was urgently 
wanted. Almost at once he was shot through 
the back, the bullet coming out in front. " In 
spite of this, with heroic courage and self- 
sacrifice, he compressed with his hand the 
gaping wound in his abdomen, delivered his 
message, staggered back with the answer, and 
fell at the feet of the officer to whom he delivered 
it. He gave his life with a supreme devotion 
to duty." Private Short, of the Yorkshires, 
was foremost in a bombing attack and refused 
to go back though severely wounded. Finally 
his leg was shattered by a shell, but as he lay 
dying he was adjusting detonators and straighten- 
ing bomb-pins for his comrades. " For the last 
eleven months he had always volunteered for 
dangerous enterprises, and has always set a 
magnificent example of bravery and devotion 
to duty." 

Officers sacrificed themselves for their men, 
and men gave their lives for their officers. 

86 




H 



P3 
W 
H 

O 

o 
o 

Q 

w 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

Private Veale, of the Devons, went out to look 
for an officer and found him among standing 
corn fifty yards from the enemy. He dragged 
him to a shell hole and went back for water. 
Then, after vain efforts to bring him in, he 
went out with a party at dusk, and while they 
did their work he kept off an enemy patrol 
with a Lewis gun. Private Turrall, of the 
Worcesters, when an officer was badly wounded 
in a bombing attack which had been compelled 
to fall back, stayed with him for three hours 
under continuous fire, completely surrounded 
by the enemy. When a counter-attack made 
it possible he carried the officer back to our 
lines. Private Quigg, of the Royal Irish Rifles, 
went out seven times under heavy machine-gun 
and shell fire to look for a lost platoon-com- 
mander, and for seven hours laboured to bring 
in wounded. Another type of service was that 
of Drummer Ritchie, of the Seaforths, who 
stood on the parapet of an enemy trench sounding 
the charge to rally men of various units who 
had lost their leaders and were beginning to 
retire. And, perhaps the finest of all, there 
was Private McFadzean, of the Royal Irish 
Rifles, who, while opening a box of bombs before 
an attack, let the box slip so that two of the 
safety pins fell out. Like Lieutenant Smith, 

87 G 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

of the East Lancashires, at Gallipoli, he flung 
himself on the bombs, and the explosion, which 
blew him to pieces, only injured one other man. 
" He well knew the danger, being himself a 
bomber, but without a minute's hesitation he 
gave his life for his comrades.*' The General 
was right when he told his hearers that the 
British soldier has a great soul. 

THE FRENCH CARRY THE GERMAN THIRD 

LINE, 

The French by the second week of August 
had carried, as we have seen, all the German 
third position south of the Somme. On 
Saturday, August 12th, after preparatory 
reconnaissances, they assaulted the third line 
north of the river from the east of Hardecourt 
to opposite Buscourt. It was a superbly 
organised assault, which on a front of over 
four miles swept away the enemy trenches 
and redoubts to an average depth of three- 
quarters of a mile. They entered the cemetery 
of Maurepas and the southern slopes of Hill 109 
on the Maurepas- Clery road, and reached the 
saddle west of Clery village. By the evening 
over 1,000 prisoners were in their hands. Four 
days later, on Wednesday, August 16th, they 
pushed their left flank — ^there adjoining the 

88 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

British — north of Maurepas, taking a mile 
of trenches, and south of that village took all 
the enemy line on a front of a mile and a quarter. 
Except for a few inconsiderable sections the 
enemy third position opposite the French had 
gone. 

The British to the north were not yet ready 
for their grand assault. They had the more 
difficult ground, and for six weeks had been 
steadily fighting up hill. At points they had 
reached the watershed, but they had not won 
enough of the high ground to give them positions 
against the German third line on the reverse 
slopes. The following week was therefore a 
tale of slow progress to the rim of the plateau, 
around Pozieres, High Wood, and Guillemont. 
Each day saw something gained by hard 
fighting. On Sunday, the 13th, it was a section 
of trench N.W. of Pozieres, and another between 
Bazentin-le-Petit and Martinpuich. On Tuesday 
it was ground close to Mouquet Farm. On 
Wednesday it was the west and south-west 
environs of Guillemont and a 300-yards advance 
at High Wood. On Thursday there was progress 
north-west of Bazentin-le-Petit towards Martin- 
puich and between Ginchy and Guillemont. 

On Friday afternoon, August 18th, came the 
next combined attack. There was a steady 

89 6 2 



THE'BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

pressure everywhere from Thiepval to the 
Somme. The advance began at 5 o'clock in 
the afternoon, in fantastic weather, with bursts 
of hot sunshine followed by thunderstorms 
and flights of rainbows. South of Thiepval, in 
the old German first line, was a strong work, 
the Leipzig Redoubt, into which we had already 
bitten. It was such a stronghold as we had 
seen at Beaumont Hamel, a nest of deep dug- 
outs and subterranean galleries, well stocked 
with machine-guns. As our front moved east 
to Pozieres and Contalmaison we had neglected 
this corner, which had gradually become the 
apex of a sharp salient. It was garrisoned by 
Prussians of the 29th Regiment, who were 
confident in the impregnability of their refuge. 
They led an easy life, while their confederates 
on the crest were crowding in improvised , 
trenches under our shelling. Those not on duty 
slept peacefully in their bunks at night, and 
played cards in the deep shelters. 

On Friday afternoon, after a sharp and 
sudden artillery preparation, two British 
battalions rushed the redoubt. We had 
learned by this time how to deal with 
the German machine-guns. Many of the 
garrison fought stubbornly to the end ; 
others we smoked out and rounded up like 

90 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

the occupants of a gambling-house surprised 
by the police. Six officers and a hundred and 
seventy men surrendered in a body. In all, 
some two thousand Germans were caught in 
this trap by numbers less than their own. 
There was no chance of a counter- stroke, for 
we got our machine-guns in position at once 
and our artillery caught every enemy attempt 
in the open. 

Elsewhere on the front there was hard fighting. 
In the centre we pushed close to Martinpuich, 
and from High Wood southward we advanced 
our lines on a frontage of more than two miles 
for a distance varying from 200 to 600 yards. 
We took the stone quarry on the edge of 
Guillemont after a hand-to-hand struggle of 
several hours. Meantime the French carried 
the greater part of Maurepas village, and the 
place called Calvary Hill to the south-east. 
This last was a great feat of arms, for they 
had against them a fresh division of the Prussian 
Guards, which had seen no serious action for 
many months. 

We were now fighting on the w^atershed. At 
Thiepval we held the ridge that overlooked 
it from the south-east. We held all the high 
ground north of Pozieres, which gave us a 
clear view of the country towards Bapaume, 

91 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

and our lines lay 300 yards beyond the Windmill. 
We had all the west side of High Wood and 
the ground between it and the Albert-Bapaume 
road. We were half-way between Longueval 
and Ginchy, and our pincers encircled Guille- 
mont. At last we were in position over against, 
and in direct view of, the German third line. 

THE STRUGGLE ON THE FLANKS. 

The next week was occupied in repelling 
German attempts to recover lost ground and 
in efforts to sharpen still further the Thiepval 
salient and to capture Guillemont. Thiepval, 
it should be remembered, was a point in the 
old German first line on the left flank of the 
great breach, and Guillemont was the one big 
position still untaken in the German second 
line. On Sunday, the 20th, the Germans shelled 
our front heavily and at about noon attacked 
our new lines on the western side of High 
Wood. They reached a portion of our trenches, 
but were immediately driven out by our infantry. 
Next day, at High Wood and at Mouquet Farm, 
there were frequent bombing attacks which 
came to nothing. On Tuesday, August 21st, 
we advanced steadily on our left, pushing our 
line to the very edge of what was once Mouquet 

92 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

Farm as well as to the north-east of it, and 
closing in to within 1,000 yards of Thiepval. 

The weather had become clearer, and our 
counter-battery work silenced some of the 
enemy's guns, while our aircraft fought many 
battles. We lost no single machine, but four 
enemy airplanes were destroyed and many 
others driven to the ground in a damaged 
condition. A sentence in a captured letter 
paid a tribute to the efficiency of the British 
airmen : " The airmen circle over us and 
try to do damage, but only enemy ones, for 
a German airman will not try to come near. 
Behind the front there is a great crowd of them, 
but here not one makes his appearance.'* 

Throughout the whole battle there was no 
question which side possessed the ascendancy 
in the air. Here is the record of the doings of 
one flight-lieutenant, who encountered a detach- 
ment of twelve German machines. " He dived 
in among them, firing one drum. The formation 

was broken up. Lieutenant then got 

under the nearest machine and fired one drum 
at 15 yards under the pilot's seat, causing the 
machine to plunge to earth south-east of 
Bapaume. Shortly afterwards some more hostile 
aeroplanes came up in formation. Lieutenant 

attacked one, which went down and landed 

93 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

in a gap between the woods. Several other 
machines were engaged with indecisive results, 
and, having expended all his ammunition. 
Lieutenant returned." This was on Sep- 
tember 1st. Lieutenant took the day's 

work as calmly as if he had been shooting 
partridges. 

On Wednesday night and Thursday morning 
a very severe counter-attack on our position 
at Guillemont, pressed with great determination, 
failed to win any ground. That afternoon, 
August 24th, we advanced nearer Thiepval, 
coming, ;at one point, within 500 yards of the 
place. In the evening, at five o'clock, the 
French carried Maurepas and pushed their 
right on to the Combles railway. Next day the 
French success enabled us to join up with our 
Allies south-east of Guillemont, where our 
pincers were now beginning to grip hard. 

The following week was one of slow and 
steady progress. We cleared the ground 
immediately north of Delville Wood by a 
dashing charge of the Rifle Brigade. The most 
satisfactory feature of these days was the 
frequency of the German counter-attacks and 
their utter failure. On August 26th, for example, 
troops of the Prussian Guard, after a heavy 
bombardment, attacked south of Thiepval village 

94 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

and were completely repulsed by the Wiltshire 
and Worcestershire battalions holding that 
front. One incident of the day deserves record. 
A despatch runner was sent back with a message 
to the rear, which he reached safely. He started 
back, came unscathed through the German 
barrage, but in the general ruin of the trench 
lines failed to find the place he had left. He 
wandered on and on till he reached something 
that looked like his old trench, and was just 
about to enter it when he found it packed 
with Germans. He immediately jumped to the 
conclusion that a counter-attack was about to 
be launched, and, slipping back, managed to 
reach our o^vn lines, where he told the news. 
In a minute or two our artillery got on to the 
spot, and the counter-attack of the Prussian 
Guard was annihilated before it began. On 
Thursday evening, August 31st, five violent 
and futile assaults were made on our front 
between High Wood and Ginchy. It looked as 
if the enemy was trying in vain to anticipate 
the next great stage of our offensive which was 
now imminent. 

THE FALL OF GUILLEMONT AND GINCHY, 

On Sunday, September 3rd, the whole Allied 
front pressed forward. In the early morning 

95 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

the Australians attacked on the extreme left — 
near Mouquet Farm and towards Thiepval. 
There they encountered some of the Guard 
reserves, and took several hundred prisoners. 
They carried various strong positions, won 
groimd east of Mouquet Farm, and still further 
narrowed the Thiepval salient. The British right, 
attacking in the afternoon, swept through 
Guillemont to the sunken road — 500 yards to 
the east. They captured Ginchy also, but were 
forced later in the day to relinquish the eastern 
part of that village. Further south they fought 
their way to the east of Falfemont Farm, where 
they joined hands with the triumphant French. 
For the French on that day had marched 
steadily from victory to victory. Shortly after 
noon, on a 3| miles front between Maurepas 
and the Somme, they had attacked after an 
intense artillery preparation. They carried the 
villages of Le Forest and Clery, and north of 
the former place won the German lines to the 
outskirts of Combles. 

As the bloody angle south of Beaumont 
Hamel will be for ever associated with the 
Ulster Division, so Guillemont was a triumph 
for the troops of southern and western Ireland. 
The men of Munster, Leinster, and Connaught 
broke through the intricate defences of the 

96 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

enemy as a torrent sweeps down rubble. The 
place was one of the strongest of all the many 
fortified villages in the German line, and its 
capture was the most important achievement 
of the British since the taking of Pozi^res. It 
was the last uncaptured point in the old German 
second position between Mouquet Farm and the 
junction with the French. It was most resolutely 
defended, since, being close to the point of 
junction, it compelled a hiatus in the advance 
of the Allied front. With its fall the work of 
two years was swept away, and in the whole 
section the enemy were now in new and 
improvised positions. 

But the advance was only beginning. On 
Monday, September 4th, all enemy counter- 
attacks were beaten off, and further ground 
won by the British near Falfemont Farm. That 
night, in a torrent of rain, our men pressed on, 
and before midday on Tuesday, September 5th, 
they were nearly a mile east of Guillemont 
and well into Leuze Wood. By that evening the 
whole of the wood was taken, and the British 
were less than 1,000 yards from the town of 
Combles, on which the French were pressing 
in on the south. Meantime, about two in the 
afternoon, a new French army came into action 
south of the Somme on a front of a dozen miles 

97 



TEE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

from Barleux to south of Chaulnes. At a bound 
it carried the whole of the German first position 
from Vermandovillers to Chilly, a front of 
nearly 3 miles, and took some 3,000 
unwounded prisoners. Next day the French 
pressed on both north and south of the river, 
and in the former area reached the west end 
of the Anderlu Wood, carried the Hopital 
Farm, the Rainette Wood, part of the Marriere 
Wood, the ridge on which runs the road from 
Bouchavesnes to Clery, and the village of 
Omiecourt. 

From Wednesday, September 6th, to the 
night of Friday, the 8th, the Germans strove 
in vain to win back what they had lost. On 
the whole 30 miles from Thiepval to Chilly 
there were violent counter-attacks which 
had no success. The Allied artillery broke 
up the massed infantry in most cases long 
before they reached our trenches. On Saturday, 
September 9th, the same Irish regiments which 
had won Guillemont carried Ginchy. The Allied 
front was now in a symmetrical line, and 
everywhere on the highest ground. Combles 
was held in a tight clutch, and the French new 
army was within 800 yards of Chaulnes Station, 
and was holding 2 J miles of the Chaulnes-Roye 
railway, thereby cutting the chief German 

98 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

line of lateral communication. The first objective 
which the Allies had set before themselves on 
July 1st had been amply won. 



99 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 



CHAPTER IV. 
CONCLUSION. 

This narrative reaches its conclusion at the 
moment when the British had made good the 
old German second position and had won the 
crest of the uplands — when the French in their 
section had advanced almost to the gates of 
Peronne and their new army on the right had 
begun to widen the breach. That moment w^as 
in a very real sense the end of a phase, the first 
and perhaps the most critical phase of the great 
Western offensive. A man may have saved 
money so that he can face the beginnings of 
adversity with cheerfulness ; but if the stress 
continues, his money will come to an end, 
and he will be no better than his fellows in 
misfortune. The immense fortifications of her 
main position represented for Germany the 
accumulated capital of two years. She had 
raised these defences when she was stronger 
than her adversaries in guns and in men. Now 
she was weaker, and her capital was gone. 
Thenceforth the campaign entered upon a new 
stage, and the first stage, which in strict terms 

100 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

we can call the Battle of the Somme, had ended 
in an Allied victory. 

By what test are we to judge the result of a 
battle in modern war ? In the old days of open 
fighting there was little room for doubt, since 
the retreat or rout or envelopment of the beaten 
army was too clear for argument. To-day, when 
the total battle front is 2,000 miles, such easy 
proofs are lacking ; but the principle remains 
the same. A battle is final when it ends in the 
destruction of the enemy's fighting strength. A 
battle is won — and it may be decisively won — 
when it results in achieving the strategic purpose 
of one of the combatants, provided that purpose 
is, on military grounds, a wise one. Hence the 
amount of territory occupied and the number of 
important points captured are not necessarily 
sound criteria at all. If they were, the German 
overrunning of Poland would have been a great 
victory, when, as a matter of fact, it was a 
disastrous failure. Von Hindenburg sought to 
destroy the Russian army, and the Russian army 
declined the honour. The success or defeat of 
a strategic purpose, that is the sole test. Judg- 
ing by this, Tannenberg was a victory for 
Germany, the Marne for France, and the first 
battle of Ypres for Britain. The battle of the 
Somme was no less a victory, since it achieved 

101 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

the Allied purpose and frustrated that of the 
enemy. 

The German purpose* we know. It was to 
hold their groimd, to maintain the mighty 
defences on which they had spent so many 
months of labour, to beat off the attack at 
whatever cost. The Allied aim must be clearly 
understood. It was not to recover so many 
square miles of France ; it was not to take 
Bapaume or Peronne or St. Quentin ; it was 
not even in the strict sense to carry this or that 
position. All these things were subsidiary and 
would follow in due course, provided the main 
purpose succeeded. That purpose was simply 
to exercise a steady and continued pressure on a 
certain section of the enemy's front. 

For nearly two years the world has been full 
of theories as to the possibility of breaking 
the German line. It is many months since 
critics pointed out the futility of piercing that 
line on too narrow a front, since all that was 
produced thereby was an awkward salient. 
It was clear that any breach must be made on 
a wide front, which would allow the attacking 
wedge to manoeuvre in the gap, and prevent 
reinforcements from coming up quickly enough 
to reconstitute the line behind. But this view 

* See page 42. 
102 




AUSTRALIA AND FRANCE. 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

took too little account of the strength of the 
German fortifications. No doubt a breach 
could be made ; but its making would be des- 
perately costly, for no bombardment could 
destroy all the defensive lines, and infantry in 
the attack would be somewhere or other faced 
with unbroken wire and unshaken parapets. 
Gradually it was accepted that an attack should 
proceed by stages, with, as a prelude to each, 
a complete artillery preparation, and that, since 
the struggle must be long drawn out, fresh troops 
should be used at each stage. 

These were the tactics of the Germans at 
Verdun, and they were obviously right. Why, 
then, did the attack on Verdun fail ? In the 
first place, because after the first week the assault 
became spasmodic and the great plan fell to 
pieces. Infantry were used wastefully in hope- 
less rushes. The pressure was relaxed for days 
on end, and the defence was allowed to reorganise 
itself. The second reason, of which the first 
was a consequence, was that Germany, after the 
initial onslaught, had not the necessary 
superiority either in numbers or moral or guns. 
At the Somme the Allies did not relax their 
pressure, and their strength was such that they 
could keep it continuously at the highest power. 

A strategical problem is not, as a rule, capable 

103 H 



THE BATTLE OP THE SOMME, 

of being presented in a simple metaphor, but we 
may say that the huge German saHent in the 
West was like an elastic band drawn very tight. 
Each part has lost elasticity, and may be 
severed by friction, which would do little harm 
to the band if less tautly stretched. That 
represents one element in the situation. Another 
aspect may be suggested by the metaphor of a 
sea- dyke of stone in a flat country where all 
stone must be imported. The waters crumble 
the wall in one section, and all free reserves of 
stone are used to strengthen that part. But 
the crumbling goes on, and to fill the breach 
stones are brought from other sections of the 
dyke. Some day there must come an hour 
when the sea will wash through the old breach, 
and a great length of the weakened dyke will 
follow in the cataclysm. 

In the first two months of the Somme battle 
some forty-four German divisions — more than 
ever appeared at Verdun — were drawn into the 
whirlpool, and many were sent in twice. They 
represented the elite of the German army. The 
Allies have taken heavy toll of these; some 50,000 
un wounded prisoners are in their hands ; many 
German counter-attacks have been caught in our 
barrage and destroyed ; and every line of trench 
taken has meant many German dead. They 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

have drawn into the battle and gravely depleted 
the surplus man-power of the enemy. They 
have done more : they have struck a shattering 
blow at his moral. For two years the German 
behind the shelter of his trench-works and the 
great engine of his artillery fought with com- 
paratively little cost against opponents far less 
well equipped. To-day the shoe is on the other 
foot, and he is coming to know what the British 
learned at Ypres and the French in the Artois — 
what it feels like to be bombarded out of exist- 
ence and to cling to shell holes and the ruins of 
trenches under a pitiless fire. It is a new thing 
in his experience, and it has taken the heart out 
of men who under other conditions fought with 
skill and courage. Further, the Allies have 
dislocated his whole military machine. Their 
ceaseless pressure is crippling his Staff work 
and confusing the organisation of which he 
justly boasted. To-day Germany is the Allies' 
inferior. The weaker side in every element 
which constitutes the strength of an army, she 
is subject in the field to the Allies' wdll. 

Now it is a law of life and of war that in such 
struggles the power of the stronger grows pari 
passu with the weakness of the less strong. 
That is the security for the continuance of the 
Allied plan. Repeatedly in the last two months 

105 . H 2 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

Germany announced that the offensive on the 
Somme must slacken ; repeatedly she declared 
that it had ceased ; but the beginning of 
September saw the assault as sternly maintained 
as in the first days of July. Like some harsh 
and remorseless chemical the waxing Allied 
energy is eating into the waning German mass. 
There is thought and care in the plan, and that 
resolution which is so strong that it can dare 
to be patient. The guarantee of the continuity 
of the Allied effort is its orderly and accurate 
progress. The heroic dash may fail and be 
shattered by the counter-attack, but this sure 
and methodical pressure is as resistless as the 
forces of Nature. It is attrition, but attrition 
in the acute form — not like the slow erosion of 
cliffs by the sea, but like the steady crumbling 
of a mountain to which hydraulic engineers have 
applied a mighty head of water. The time 
must come when the far-flung German lines will 
be exhausted by the strain and will seek to 
retire. In that falling back, with the Allies 
all round the salient at their throats, may be 
fought the decisive action of the war. 

A sketch of the main features of a great 
action is like the rough outline of a picture 
before the artist has added the colours and 

106 



TEE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. 

the proportions of life. It cannot even hint 
at the rich human quality of it all, the staunch 
brotherhood in arms, the faithfulness, the 
cheerful sacrifice, the fortitude, any more than 
it can portray the terror and suffering. But 
it is well to realise that this battle, unparalleled 
in its magnitude and gravity, was also unique 
in another circumstance. It was the effort of 
the whole British nation, and an effort made 
of each man's free will. Her armies were not 
a separate caste, whose doings the ordinary 
citizen watched With interest and excitement, 
but with a certain detachment, as those of 
friendly gladiators hired for a purpose foreign 
to the decent routine of his life. They were 
composed of the ordinary citizen himself. The 
Army was the people. Not a class or profession 
or trade but had sent its tens of thousands to 
the ranks, and scarcely a British home but had 
losses to mourn. Those fighting men had come 
willingly to the task, because their own interest 
and happiness were become one with their 
country's victory. Having willed the end, they 
willed also the means, and showed themselves 
gluttons for the full rigour of service. One old 
doubt has been resolved. Could free men show 
the highest discipline ? Was that acme of 
organisation which a conquering army demands 

107 



THE BATTLE OF TEE SOMME. 

compatible with a true democracy ? "It has 
long been a grave question," said Abraham 
Lincoln, nearly sixty years ago, "whether any 
Government, not too strong for the liberties of 
its people, can be strong enough to maintain its 
existence in great emergencies." That riddle 
is now nobly answered. 

No great thing is achieved without a price, 
and on the Somme fell the very flower of 
Britain, the straightest of limb, the keenest of 
brain, the most eager of spirit. In such a mourn- 
ing each man thinks first of his friends. Each 
of us has seen his crowded circle become like 
the stalls of a theatre at an unpopular play. 
Each has suddenly found the world of time 
strangely empty and eternity strangely thronged. 
To look back upon the gallant procession of 
those who offered their all and had their gift 
accepted, is to know exultation as well as 
sorrow. The young men who died almost before 
they had looked on the world, the makers 
and the doers who left their tasks unfinished, 
were greater in their deaths than in their lives. 
They builded better than they knew, for the 
sum of their imperfections was made perfect, 
and out of loss they won for their country 
and mankind an enduring gain. Their memory 
will abide so long as men are found to set 

108 



THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 

honour before ease, and a nation lives not 
for its ledgers alone but for some purpose of 
virtue. They have become, in the fancy of 
Henry Vaughan, the shining spires of that 
City to which we travel. 



IV. Speai^ht &* Sons, Prtnttrs, Fetter Lanr, London, E.C. 













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